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Redefining the Naval Seascape: The Emergence of the Boat

by

Joseph Zeller

A THESIS

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CALGARY, ALBERTA

SEPTEMBER, 2009

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1+1 Canada Abstract

My thesis examines the evolution and impact of motor torpedo boats. The process began in 1869 with Whitehead's invention of autonomous torpedoes. The device quickly became entwined with its carriers, tiny 'torpedo boats', and here began a revolution that altered the naval seascape. Armed with these small and inexpensive vessels, navies could destroy even the most powerful national treasure, the . The capacity for weaker and weaker navies to successfully oppose and destroy larger powers had never before existed. This new potential had considerable impact in the international arena.

Coastal defence, commerce warfare, division of land and sea operations, and design and functionality of other ships changed. By , every nation coveted torpedo boats, for both offensive use and for protection against the torpedo's deadly potential.

Then leading naval thinkers weighed in with differing opinions. My thesis examines these opinions and the 's enormous impact.

n Acknowledgements

I acknowledge with gratitude and appreciation the help and support of my family, friends, colleagues and mentors throughout this process.

I thank Dr. Holger H. Herwig for supervising me during the Military and Strategic

Studies graduate program. He has been generous in sharing both his time and experience, offering help and insights that challenged me to explore new ideas and define my own ideas with greater clarity and substance. Faculty, staff and fellow students at University of Calgary's Centre for Military and Strategic Studies have been instrumental in aiding this endeavour - thank you.

Thanks to Dr. Michael Epkenhans and Dr. John Ferris and my committee members, Dr. Joerg Denzinger and Dr. Rob Huebert, for taking the time to edit and comment on my efforts. Their feedback has helped craft this into a far better thesis than it otherwise would have been.

I would also like to recognize the importance of the Department of History at

Wilfrid Laurier University, particularly Dr. Roger Sarty and Dr. Joyce Lorimer, in encouraging my study of the past and helping me develop the tools that I have relied upon to investigate it.

Finally, words alone are insufficient to express the debt owed to my parents, grandparents, and siblings, who have supported my endeavour with great enthusiasm and ability.

in Table of Contents

Abstract ii Acknowledgements iii Table of Contents iv

CHAPTER 1: TERMS AND DEFINITIONS 1

CHAPTER 2: INTRODUCTION 3

CHAPTER 3: BACKGROUND 17

CHAPTER 4: GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE OF THE TORPEDO'S EMERGENCE 36 The Early Years 38 Austria, to 1880 40 Britain, to 1880 41 , to 1880 44 , to 1880 48 Other countries, to 1880 49 1880 on 51 Russia 58 Germany 64 Conclusion 67

CHAPTER 5: THE TORPEDO BOAT'S IMPACT ON THE NAVAL SEASCAPE 69 Aube 70 Mahan 78 Tirpitz 85 Fisher 90 Conclusion 101

CHAPTER 6: CONCLUSION 102

BIBLIOGRAPHY 105

iv 1

Chapter 1: Terms and Definitions

This thesis deals with the development of the . It defines this vessel as a torpedo-armed craft under a certain tonnage and armed with autonomous fish torpedoes.1 In the 1800s, the early coastal torpedo craft rarely displaced more than 100 tons and ocean-going torpedo boats and were often about 500 tons in standard displacement. By the end of the time period dealt with in these pages, by World War I, these figures had about doubled. By comparison tended to be about ten times larger, averaging over 10,000 tons in the 1890s and often exceeding 20,000 tons by

World War I.3

The inclusion of destroyers in this thesis as a form of torpedo boat was a decision not taken lightly, as the term 'motor torpedo boat' has traditionally been used to include only coastal vessels of a far smaller nature. However, during the formative development of the from the coast-bound motor torpedo boat, differentiating lines were very much blurred. Moreover, limiting the definition to coastal vessels fails to encompass all appropriate vessels, as many small coastal torpedo craft have been pressed into service on the high seas at various times of need. Also, the destroyer has demonstrated some of the most persuasive and quantifiable examples of the torpedo- armed small craft's potential

1 Autonomous fish torpedoes are torpedoes with self-contained propulsion and explosive capacity which, for the purposes of this thesis, begin with Whitehead's torpedo dating from 1869. 2 D. K. Brown and Robert Gardiner, Eclipse of the Big Gun : , 1906-45, Conway's History of the (London: Conway Maritime P., 1992).p.81 and 93 3 James L. George, History of Warships : From Ancient Times to the Twenty-First Century (London: Constable, 1999, 1998).p.l09 2

and has, therefore, formed an important cornerstone in the torpedo boat's intellectual and physical development and use within the maritime arena.

Submarines and torpedo-armed aircraft have been largely omitted in this thesis because their history is relatively well documented and because they constitute a radical departure in design and potential. Although arguably conceptually derived from the torpedo boat, they quickly diverged into new areas of unique growth and potential. 3

Chapter 2: Introduction

In the latter-half of the nineteenth century, the torpedo boat revolutionized , causing a large upheaval among naval thinking. Large vessels had dominated the naval arena since time immemorial but for the first time this domination was contested by tiny, light and fast ships armed with one of the newest technological marvels, the

Whitehead torpedo. Some contemporaries likened it to competition between "the microbe and the giant".4 These men showed remarkable foresight as this was a perfect analogy for the development and eventual domination by the torpedo boat. It was very much like a virus that infected the whole ocean. The torpedo boat started modestly, competing for dominance in the field of tiny severely restricted coastal defence vessels, co-opting their designs for its own replication. It quickly grew to the limit of its new environment and motor torpedo boats swarmed the coastal water of every nation from Europe to the Far

East.

Torpedo craft then began to evolve and change as they attempted to encroach upon the harsher but more plentiful oceanic waters. Many attempts failed but a few designs showed promise at surviving in this new environment. Some of these designs used a host vessel to carry the torpedo boats across the waves in order that they might threaten foreign coasts. Other boats simply grew in size and strength until they could

4 Theodore Ropp, The Development of a Modern Navy : French Naval Policy 1871-1904 (Annapolis: Naval Institute, 1987).p. 137 4

survive unsupported. Even the giant battleships were not immune to the infection. Some were co-opted by the new weapon system, becoming torpedo craft themselves, while others cowered from the torpedo boats behind defences of nets, mines and barricades. By the dawn of the twentieth century, the 'microbe' dominated naval affairs, successfully having 'infected' all of its competitors. The few remaining giant battleships persisted only because they had themselves acquired the protection of their own class of torpedo boat designed solely to protect the lumbering dinosaurs from other torpedo craft.

Later efforts in battleship design and the continuing evolution of small and accurate quick firing guns may have temporarily succeeded in eclipsing the torpedo boat during the early twentieth century. However, torpedo craft had enough remaining teeth even in World War I to force Jutland and its Grand Fleet, the greatest concentration of warships in the world, to turn away not once, but twice, from their pursuit of the fleeing

German navy and finally to abandon that pursuit as night fell. The torpedo boat's direct descendant, the submarine5, nearly brought Britain to its knees during both World Wars and proved a central concern during the Cold War. The torpedo boat has left an indelible mark upon the present because of its development and prominence in the past.

5 Chronologically, the predated the torpedo boat as a torpedo carrier since the submarine was the first vessel equipped with a torpedo. However, the early submarine could only fire its torpedoes under water. This chapter does not discuss the submarine in detail primarily because the slow and unreliable steam-driven of this era (the nineteenth century), with their under-water torpedoes, did not constitute a militarily significant combat force. The submarine did not become a viable force until the advent of the diesel electric turbine engine in the early twentieth century, sometime after the rise of the torpedo boat. 5

This thesis describes and analyzes the torpedo boat's formative years from the late nineteenth century into early twentieth century, pointing out the formidable impact this small craft had upon the navies of the day. No wars or available proving grounds existed during this time period, and so the vessel's potential was largely shaped and argued within the intellectual realms of naval thought. By the time World War I allowed navies a venue to actually test these small craft, the formulation of thought and usage surrounding these vessels had largely been resolved. My thesis primarily examines the debate and conclusions made during those preceding formative years. This chapter introduces the subject and briefly examines the theoretical and historiographic legacy that surrounds the emergence of the torpedo boat. The second chapter follows the development and evolution of the torpedo boat. The third chapter looks at global development and use of both the torpedo and torpedo boat by various national nations during the late 1800s. The fourth chapter explores the two primary schools of naval thought at the turn of the century. Focusing on four naval figures of the time (Aube, Mahan, Tirpitz and Fisher), it describes their views of torpedo craft and examines the impact of the torpedo boat on coastal defence, commerce warfare, naval operations, and design and construction. The thesis ends with a brief conclusion.

The first naval thinkers to tackle the tactical and strategic possibilities arising from the motor torpedo boat within the naval arena were contemporaries of its initial development. Writing in a time of chaos, they were largely concerned with addressing broader problems relating to the upheavals of the day rather than closely examining the 6

worth of this specific small vessel. Like others who write without benefit of hindsight, they were grounded in their own context, trying to determine which direction the future would take and which decisions should be taken to resolve their current dilemmas. Their compasses did not lead them to the torpedo boat, in part because the motor torpedo boat had fought few battles during its formative years. Navies were forced to create and rationalize their roles based upon perceived potential to fit in with their perceived needs.

Many saw the battleship as a continuation of the old sailing ship-of-the-line and so had responded to it with familiarity, developing it further within a recognizable template6, but the motor torpedo boat was a radical departure from anything that had come before.

Lacking traditional precedent and a contemporary proving-ground, naval thinkers and decision makers were required to conceptualize a new framework to evaluate this new vessel and the terrifying potential it held. Because many applied existing and soon-to-be obsolete analytical frameworks, important potential contributions of the torpedo were not seen.

The motor torpedo boat became a central figure in the ongoing problem of how navies choose to properly utilize something for which there is no precedent. Navies initially settled upon a process of trial and error. However, the pace of technological change only increased as time passed and the flood of new developments became a torrent. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, navies were increasingly forced to

6 Robert L. O'Connell, Sacred Vessels : The Cult of the Battleship and the Rise of the U.S. Navy (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1991).p.27 7

constantly reassess their decisions as technology progressed. The motor torpedo boat, and the weaponry and armour devised to counter it, were in a constant state of flux. As navies became unable to try and test every new idea, they began to formulate more systematic methods and theories to determine what course their navies should take. The value and use of small torpedo craft and the continued value of large battleships in light of the threat posed by these small craft were hotly debated issues.

The literature pertaining to this debate began even as the question was formulated.

Russia was first to capitalize on the new development. A Russian officer, Stepan

Makarov, was responsible, in large part, for the creation of the first motor torpedo boats, as well as for the tactics they were to use when engaging an enemy. He also had the distinction of being the only individual to have carried out a small craft launched self- propelled torpedo boat attack prior to 1891.7 Finally, Makarov was also the author of one of the most exhaustive and complete evaluations of that technology. Although published in 1898, Vice Admiral Makarov's book on the development of torpedo boat tactics was comprehensive, objective and firmly founded upon the ships and technology present at the time. Although Makarov championed the motor torpedo boat, he was not blind to its faults. His book carefully evaluated the impact of the motor torpedo boat. Only after identifying its strengths, as well as its limitations and weaknesses, did he then try to incorporate it into the existing fleet and available technology. The core of his argument

7 Fred T. Jane, The Imperial Russian Navy, Rev. ed. (London: Conway Maritime Press, 1983).p.200 8

was that navies had to think and revaluate what they had always taken for granted and develop standardized systems rather than to continue their piecemeal efforts simply because that was the way it had always been done.

History affords us many incomparable examples as to how people should be trained and these may still serve us, for man remains just as he has ever been. As far as concerns material, the means we possess at the present time are in no way like those which were employed in the days of the old naval wars. If we exclude a few skirmishes, examples of modern naval war are wanting; therefore, in the conduct of war we should put more trust in our common sense than in military precedents, which are completely insufficient.8

His book was deeply rooted in the nuts and bolts of naval technology. Every fact, figure and anecdote directly impacted on the strategies and tactics navies should employ.

This book is one of the few naval works to make significant use of firsthand experience and events which are, unfortunately, also impossible to verify. Makorov's work suffers from the national exclusivity typifying almost all naval writers of this time period. It can also be argued that the book's value is limited as it mainly argues for changes which were never adopted by the Russian Navy. However, Makarov's work is noteworthy in describing problems and concerns which were plaguing navies of the time and as a systematic attempt to find remedies and create a new naval structure that would incorporate and standardize even such changes as torpedo craft.

Makarov argued that navies needed standardization and rationalization of common practices and designs, however imperfect, in order to effectively carry out their 9

role. It is unfortunate that his views were largely ignored and that the hodgepodge

Russian Navy was effectively destroyed in the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905), a conflict which Makarov was not to survive.9

The Influence of Sea Power Upon History by , 1889, is important for its impact upon its times. It was undoubtedly the most significant of naval writings in terms of its impact and readership. As will be further described in Chapter 4,

Mahan argued that all the technological developments of the past century were fundamentally irrelevant and that the large battleship should continue to dominate as it always had.10 He reasoned that small torpedo craft could be largely ignored. Although his efforts provided only one of several factors leading to the motor torpedo decline in the early twentieth century, The Influence of Sea Power Upon History still constituted a powerful determinant of public opinion.

Julian Corbett's Principles of Maritime Strategy was published in 1911 with far less fanfare than Mahan's book. As an exercise in the systematic application of history, theory and thought, it far surpassed the former. Unlike Mahan, Corbett was far more willing to admit doubt and recognize the uncertainties which still lay unresolved within the British navy that had been largely unified and standardized into a stable organization once more. Even as late as 1911 Corbett asserted:

Stepan Osipovich Makarov, Discussion of Questions in Naval Tactics, Classics of Sea Power (Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1990). 9 Ibid.p.xxxiv 10

Judged by the old naval practice, it is an anomalous position to have reached. But the whole naval art has suffered a revolution beyond all previous experience, and it is possible the old practice is no longer a safe guide. Driven by the same necessities, every naval Power is following the same course. It may be right, it may be wrong; no one at least but the ignorant or hasty will venture to pass categorical judgment. The best we can do is to endeavour to realise the situation to which, in spite of all misgivings, we have been forced, and to determine its relations to the developments of the past.11

This self-appointed task is one which he engaged in with great skill and dexterity: he carefully walked the line between those lessons that history might genuinely offer to the challenges of the present and those areas and predictions that history cannot be used to responsibly forecast. This book is not only an excellent historical analysis of naval affairs of the time, but the issues it deals with and its methodology of analysis are also pertinent to current day. His work examined the progression of motor boats since their creation more than forty years prior. Some of the smaller issues of technology have been resolved and new challenges have emerged. However, it is noteworthy that the looming threat of the motor torpedo boat still continues to pose the same terrifying destructive potential and remains undiminished by the passage of time:

A. T. Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1805 (London: Bison Books, 1980).p.8

11 Julian S. Corbett, Some Principles of Maritime Strategy (Annapolis, Md.: Naval

Institute Press, 1988).p.l23-124 11

...it cannot be said that the old wars present any case where the ultimate question of command was seriously affected by a minor counterattack. The advent of the torpedo, however, has given the idea a new importance that cannot be overlooked. The degree of that importance is at present beyond calculation... it is necessary to use extreme caution in estimating its significance.12

Corbett was the last of those researchers who were contemporaries of the torpedo boat's formative years. With the end of World War I and the success of the submarine,

combined with the advent of air power, torpedo boats and their larger ocean-going

cousins, destroyers, were finally to play the roles they had spent the last half century

arduously establishing. Although both vessels continued to evolve, that first period of

chaotic uncertainty and unformulated experimentation had largely come to an end.

As both Corbett and Makarov noted, one of the major problems in evaluating this

instrumental ship type stemmed from it having been developed during a time of relative peace in which there were only a handful of engagements, none of which actually

involved a western power13, and thus severely limited the opportunities in which the motor torpedo boat could capture the imagination and be memorialized for its exploits.

This was further compounded by the fact that the torpedo boat was almost always either used for night raids against stationary vessels or made to act in concert with much larger

12 Ibid.p.228

13 With the tentative exception of Russia, whose humiliating defeat by Japan in 1905 had left the navy to demoralized and decimated and whose example had proven inconclusive at best (Bryan Ranft, Technical Change and British Naval Policy, 1860-1939 (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1977).p.78) 12

and more grandiose ships, leaving the smaller vessels overshadowed and largely forgotten.

Later, however, in both world wars, the large battleship arguably took back seat to the smaller craft and became largely inactive (as in World War I) or relegated to the role of carrier escort and anti-air and artillery platform. The two world wars provided a very important forum in which the values of such small torpedo craft were rigorously tested.

Although the performance of the motor torpedo boat and derivative destroyer during these conflicts lies outside the scope of this thesis, they are nonetheless a means of authenticating the value of small torpedo craft and serve to finally lay to rest the question as to whether the microbe could ever bring down the giant. Even if the technology differed somewhat, the viability of the concept was at least firmly laid to rest.

When World War II ended, the US Navy had no trouble rationalizing a separate historic account devoted solely to the exploits of the motor torpedo boats and the author, a retired captain named Robert J. Buckley, Jr., likewise had no trouble convincing the president of the United States of the time to write his foreword when it was published in

1961. John F. Kennedy wrote: "This need for small, fast, strongly armed vessels does not wane."14 The author further underscored these vessel's importance, writing; "PT's [patrol boats or motor torpedo boats] met the enemy at closer quarters (and with greater

Robert Johns Bulkley, At Close Close Quarters : Pt Boats in the (Washington Naval History Division, 1962.).p.vi 13

frequency) than any other type of surface craft. The crews of no other vessels experienced so high a degree of personal engagement with the enemy." 15

The history of the Canadian Navy in the two world wars as well as the dozens of associated works, likewise underscore the importance of small craft because during these times the Canadian navy was little other than a navy of small craft. The two volumes of

Canada's official history in World War II, No Higher Purpose and A Blue Water Navy by

Dr. W. A. B Douglas, Dr. Roger Sarty, and Dr. Michael Whitby are especially apt in demonstrating the range and accomplishment with which small craft were capable.

The passage of time also brought about a greater understanding of what had occurred and towards what the chaos of the nineteenth century had been leading. In 1937, with the increased benefits of hindsight and distance, Theodore Ropp wrote what was one of the earliest and still one of, if not, the best and most complete accounts of the rise of the torpedo boat. Although it focuses on France, it remains one of the most authoritative and exhaustive accounts of the development of the small craft navies of the present. The fact that it remains unsurpassed after more than seventy years is certainly a credit to the author but it is also a reflection of the lack of the enthusiasm of most subsequent naval historians to follow where he led and expand upon what he wrote.

15 Ibid.p.xiv 16 Ropp, The Development of a Modern Navy : French Naval Policy 187]-]904.p.V 14

On the path naval historians take backwards through the past, all too many are seduced by the siren's call of the majestic and foreboding battleship. As Robert

O'Connell illustrated when writing on the 'cult of the battleship,'

As I learned more and more about the Battleship's shortcomings, I found myself, like so many before me, falling under its spell. I have traveled hundreds of miles to visit these wonderful ships, reverently preserved like a necklace of talismans around our nation's coasts. I have stood in awe under the great guns, wondering what it must have been like to hear them fire...17

Although the prevalent view of the battleship's value has continued to be minimized by ever greater hindsight and the access to ever more study on the part of historians, little has changed regarding its reverence. O'Connell's work Sacred Vessels may be an intriguing and persuasive work on how the battleship became briefly ascendant despite its enormous flaws and weaknesses, but even he failed to recognize the stronger, if smaller, contender which still plies the ocean waves and the naval trade; only five pages of his

400 pages treatise are shown to have any direct mention of the torpedo boat.

Until the advent of the atomic bomb in August 1945, Whitehead's invention, the torpedo, was the dominant weapon of destruction in warfare at sea for well over half a century. And although after 1905 gunnery and mines continued to destroy many warships and merchant vessels, the vast majority of ships fell victim to the relentless menace of the torpedo. 8

Edwyn Gray has written one of the few books to deal directly with both the subject and its formative time period. However, while The Devil's Device is an excellent biography of the inventor of the torpedo, Robert Whitehead, it is not an analysis of the

17 O'Connell, Sacred Vessels : The Cult of the Battleship and the Rise of the U.S. Navy.p.xin 15

torpedo or the ship used to transport it; nor does it follow the intellectual development and tactical revolutions brought about as a result. His second work, Nineteenth-Century

Torpedoes and Their Inventors, is, once again, an excellent catalogue of nuts and bolts of the weapon itself, but while torpedo design, performance and development are very important they fail to capture the complete impact the motor torpedo boat had upon navies and nations worldwide. In the early 1870s a small tiny vessel now possessed the potential to destroy an armoured battleship and any navy engaging in such an encounter would come to be actively risking what was the largest and most sophisticated concentrated investment a nation could make.

Holger Herwig illustrated the torpedo boat's impact upon Germany during the nineteenth century in his book on the Luxury Fleet on the formation of the German Navy and its development between 1888 and 1918. Arthur Marder covered the subject within a

British context, and Lawrence Sondhaus and Vego covered the subject from the

Austrian perspective from the 1860s until World War I. Both Sondhaus and Vego touched upon the Torpedo Boat within authoritative and exhaustive accounts of naval developments during the nineteenth and twentieth century. Many other renowned and respected historians have dealt with the subject in paragraphs and notes imbedded in larger works. However, the development of the modern cornerstone of the navy remains elusive, caught in glimpses here and there within short paragraphs or mere sentences

Edwyn Gray, The Devil's Device : The Story of Robert Whitehead, Inventor of the Torpedo (London: Seeley, 1975).p. xiii 16

within works on more general subjects. Even Ropp dealt with the torpedo boat only as it pertained to the French naval condition. To date all of the most recognized works on the subject have either dealt with the torpedo boat either as merely a national issue or only as another example of a wider process of development. This thesis provides a multinational review and analysis of the torpedo boat and its impact on the navies of the late eighteenth century and early twentieth century. 17

Chapter 3: Background

This Chapter follows the evolution and development of the torpedo boat, establishing a historical foundation from which to evaluate its importance. Both the ship and the weapon it carried began within the arena of coastal defence at a time when larger ships of wood and sail were slowly giving way to ones of iron and steam. However, with the next evolution of design, torpedo craft were made ocean-worthy, just as similar developments saw steel battleships and huge turreted guns reinvigorate naval complements once more. Finally, as the new and expensive behemoths sought a means of protection against their new tiny nemeses, the torpedo boat's last incarnation in the nineteenth century, the torpedo boat destroyer, took form as a vessel purpose-built to counter this original threat while also retaining the capacity to make torpedo attacks of their own.

Since the origins of naval combat, there existed a tradition of size and scale.

Bigger, historically, meant better in design; for several thousand years, the wooden ships of war grew ever larger until wood gave way to iron, and then to steel (at least in part) so that ships could continue to increase in scale. This progression seemed logical as larger vessels could hold more weapons and take more punishment than could smaller vessels. It was a bitter shock to many traditional naval thinkers when suddenly, in the latter half of the nineteenth century, naval ship size no longer mattered. 18

The foundation of this new thought was laid when Robert Fulton created the term

'torpedo' to describe a floating explosive towed behind his submarine Nautilus which, on

8 August 1801 became the first submarine to successfully sink a surface vessel.19

'Torpedo' quickly became a term used to describe any offensive explosive device from charges towed (Harvey torpedo), or placed on the front of long poles in front of vessels

(spar torpedo), to ocean and even land mines. Small craft were developed and equipped in the hopes that they could somehow close and ram an enemy vessel with these explosive charges. These earliest vessels formed the foundation of the torpedo craft to come.

The first truly modern, or self-propelled, torpedo was developed by Giovanni

Luppis.20 His design was then improved and patented by Robert Whitehead, a manager at

9 1 an engine works plant in Fiume, Austria. This new design was the beginning of the modern torpedo boat, as Whitehead, claiming that this new torpedo (which he named after himself) would be accurate within 600 to 800 yards, proceeded to sell his invention first to Austria-Hungary in 1869, then to Britain in 1870, and to France in 1873. Other 99

European nations were quick to follow.

These first generation torpedoes failed to live up to Whitehead's boasts. They were accurate only to within 200 yards, travelled at the slow speed of 9 knots, worked

19 Ropp, The Development of a Modern Navy : French Naval Policy 1871-1904.p. 110 20 W. Laird Clowes and Clements R. Markham, The : A History from the Earliest Times to the Present, 7 vols., vol. 7 (London: Chatham, 1996).p.59 21 Ibid.p.39 19

only in calm water, and could be fired only in the same direction as the ship was pointing.

To fire its torpedoes effectively, a ship had to slow to almost half its speed, wait while facing the opposing ship (making itself a ridiculously easy target), and then fire the torpedo that was so slow as to be easily avoided.23 The French cautiously converted only two of their seven new Duperre coastal defence craft to Whitehead's new and untried design.24 Even when the Russians bought an unprecedented 110 small craft in 1877 for their war with Turkey, they chose only a handful of Whiteheads and outfitted the rest with towing and spar torpedoes. Initially, experienced naval officers perceived the

Whitehead torpedo as something of a toy and an empty promise.

However, views changed quickly. The Whitehead became one of those rare technologies that continue to swiftly evolve and improve as time passed. Even by the time the French purchased it, barely four years after its conception, its speed had more than doubled to twenty knots and its explosive yield had been increased to 75 pounds,

01 while its accuracy and reliability had also increased substantially. By 1894, the torpedo was capable of hitting a target 600 yards away while traveling at more than 26 knots with

200 pounds of explosives (a new and more powerful type than the original). These new torpedoes could even be altered to hit targets 2,600 yards away, provided that the speed

22 Ropp, The Development of a Modern Navy : French Naval Policy 1871-1904.p. 112 23 Makarov, Discussion of Questions in Naval Tactics.p. 163 24 Ropp, The Development of a Modern Navy : French Naval Policy 1871-1904.p. 130 25Ibid.p.ll6 26 Arthur Jacob Marder, The Anatomy of British Sea Power: A History of British Naval Policy in the Pre- Era, 1880-1905 (New York: Octagon Books, 1976).p.l24 27 Makarov, Discussion of Questions in Naval Tactics.p. 166 20

was slowed to 11 knots. By the 1890s, the torpedo constituted a very effective and dangerous weapon. The Whiteheads of this era had resolved most of the earlier functional weaknesses. However, they remained unreliable in choppy water, bad weather and cold temperatures (below 4°C).29 They also continued to be very difficult to aim against moving targets and, especially, when both the torpedo boat and its target were moving. In such cases, a competent crew could generally hit a target within 330 yards (but only if the target failed to spot the torpedo).

While the 1890s saw the Whitehead Torpedo become a prominent and effective weapons system, its development did not end there. In 1900, the effective range of the torpedo increased more than three times, to more than 2,000 yards, with the addition of an effective gyroscope . By 1905, First Sea Lord Fisher was worried it would soon overtake 5,000 yards, and later that year he was nearly proved correct as newly invented heaters extended torpedo ranges yet further to the point where they could almost reach farther than a battleship's guns. The torpedo's destructive potential also continued to increase in leaps and bounds. In 1903, the British Belleisle had its armour strengthened to the best standards of the British navy. With high hopes of their ship's invincibility, they placed it in the center of Portsmouth Harbour and made a spectacle of launching a single torpedo towards it. HMS Belleisle sank within seven minutes and

28Ibid.p.l66 29Ibid.p.l77 30 Nicholas A. Lambert, Sir John Fisher's Naval Revolution (Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press, 1999).p.77 21

continued to obstruct shipping for several months until salvagers managed to remove the hulk. The admiral in charge concluded, "I regret very much, but I fear we must accept that with our present knowledge it is not possible to make a ship invulnerable against attack of the 18-inch Whitehead, without going prohibitive in size."

The largest single problem with the torpedo was that it took some time to reach the target. Against a moving target this made aiming a difficult enough chore but while moving, it also created a telltale whitecap which, when spotted, permitted the enemy to move out of the way of the torpedo.

These limitations did not negate the torpedo's strengths or destructive potential, but they did have a direct impact upon the ways in which torpedo craft around the globe were utilized. Torpedo craft, especially the smaller ones, were organized into groups, or flotillas, in order to attack the enemy en masse from multiple angles, thereby greatly increasing the likelihood of a hit. Torpedo boats were instructed to surround an enemy and to attack from all sides, when possible, in order to box the target in and leave it nowhere to turn or run without putting itself in the path of another torpedo. Finally, torpedo craft were designated for night attacks. This tactic was significant as the torpedo's deficiencies could now be hidden under the cover of darkness. At any one time, the majority of a nation's navy remained stationary at anchor awaiting orders, taking on

31 John Arbuthnot Fisher, Records (London ; Toronto: Hodder and Stoughton,, 1919), microform.p.177 32 Andrew D. Lambert, Naval History 1850-Present, 2 vols. (Aldershot, England ; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2007).p 80 22

supplies or doing maintenance. As long as the torpedo boat remained hidden, it could effectively hit these large stationary battleships that were well-lit and silhouetted by whatever harbour or port they occupied. Likewise, a torpedo moving at night was almost impossible to spot. Finally, when engaging in night forays, attacking boats could choose the time and weather. Torpedo boats ruled the night and the nations of the world were well justified in creating elaborate defences for their harbours involving mines, booms, patrols, watches, searchlights, and nets.

The first specialized vessel designed from the ground up to handle the torpedo was HMS Lightning, completed in 1877. It was 87 feet long and weighed only 32 tons.34

However, the British chose largely to abandon the motor torpedo boat concept after witnessing the dismal failure of the Russian boats later that year. Although the Russo-

Turkish War of 1877 did mark the first successful use of a Whitehead torpedo in combat when a Russian torpedo boat succeeded in sinking a Turkish , overall the Russians succeeded in inflicting more damage upon themselves than on their Turkish enemy. It did not seem to matter that few of the Russian boats had been armed with Whiteheads or that the Russian crews had been untrained and disorganized. British admirals and officials had the proof they needed to convince themselves and others that the torpedo was a

33 Corbett, Some Principles of Maritime Strategy.p.206 34 E. H. H. Archibald and Ray Woodward, The Metal Fighting Ship in the Royal Navy : 1860-1970 (London: Blandford Press, 1971).p.50 23

groundless threat. The field of torpedo development was thus left to France, Austria-

Hungary and Germany.

At this point, the torpedo boat constituted a primarily defensive weapon. Because

the range of such boats meant they could only be safely deployed close to their homeport,

they were effective exclusively in the event that enemy ships tried to attack their base. In

an era with ships bristling with all different types of guns, the torpedo boat had to be as

small a target as possible and it had to be manoeuvrable enough to zigzag and get out of

the way of guns firing at it. Finally, such a vessel had to be fast enough to close quickly

into torpedo range with an enemy ship, being careful to avoid being shot, especially from

the turrets that enabled firing in any direction.

Austria-Hungary and Germany recognized the defensive potential of such vessels.

Using a combination of coastal batteries, mines and motor torpedo boats, they made their

harbours and ports impenetrable.36 The British navy was still ruling the high seas, but

now much of the European coast was closed to it. This defensive effectiveness provided

one of the torpedo's most significant and fundamental changes to prevailing naval

thought. Traditionally, navies had sailed right up to enemy cities to loot, invade, destroy,

or blockade. Even nations with no navies and little interest in the sea had been forced to

take notice of naval threats. However, the torpedo made it far too dangerous to enter an

35 Arthur Jacob Marder and Bureau of International Research of Harvard University and Radcliffe College., The Anatomy of British Sea Power a History of British Naval Policy in the F're-Dreadnought Era, 1880-1905 (New York: A.A. Knopf,, 1940), microform :.p.45 24

enemy harbour and so the ability of navies to intimidate and project power onto land became severely diminished. Naval aviation eventually bridged this gap and during

World War II large ships of war would once again pummel the shore and support events on land, but for more than fifty years the torpedo saw navies stay firmly, and almost exclusively, at sea. The British fleet could no longer enter German and Austrian waters uninvited, could no longer achieve a traditional close-in blockade and could no longer bombard the coastal cities of many of its European rivals. With its ships neutralized,

Britain lost a substantial amount of its authority on the mainland. Still, one nation remained unable to fortify its coast line - namely, France. The coastal waters of the

English Channel and the Atlantic Ocean proved to be too rough and too wide to fortify.

Coastal batteries could defend points of land, but not the entire coast. Mines broke their mooring lines. The small coastal defence motor torpedo boats could not fire in anything but the most placid of waters and, in any case, they tended to capsize if more than six kilometres from the coast.38 Unable to match the British Fleet in tonnage and firepower,

France had good reason to explore other alternatives offered by the torpedo boat.

The French dreamed of creating a torpedo boat capable of travelling the high seas.

Such a vessel would patrol their whole border, but an ocean-going torpedo boat would do more than simply defend. The French wanted a vessel that could negate British sea power

36 Richard Humble, Before the Dreadnought: The Royal Navy from Nelson to Fisher (London: Macdonald and Jane's, 1976).p.l40 37 Corbett, Some Principles of Maritime Strategy.p.203 38 Ropp, The Development of a Modern Navy : French Naval Policy 1871-1904.p. 137 25

even on the oceans. Once again, established naval thought was challenged as large sea­ going powers found their fleets not just kept away from an enemy's coast, but even off their own. Large ships of war had been seen as the arbiters of naval warfare, but now these ships could neither attack the enemy nor defend themselves. Rather than rely upon their sea-going navies, or 'blue water' fleets, nations increasingly turned towards fixed and coastal measures dedicated to the defence of their harbours and coastline. This

'brown water' approach saw navies dwindle as land defences grew. Navies came into increasing competition with their respective armies as each sought to prove that they could most effectively protect their nations against assault from the sea. While these defences were arrayed against a variety of threats, from invasion to protection of trade, they were all seen to be made possible by the ability of torpedo boats to sneak close to shore. And so, nations created elaborate defences as they barricaded themselves within their harbours.

Torpedo boats could also attack in swarms, traveling and performing with the rest of the fleet. Using the big ships as cover, torpedo boats could decimate even a superior enemy force. Such was the hope of the , but it met with little success (at least initially). Ocean-going torpedo craft needed to be bigger and heavier than their coastal brethren. They were low, narrow and long to present a small target while closing on the enemy, while at the same time they carried fuel, supplies and engines needed for longer voyages. They also needed to be reliable and self-sufficient while at the same time sacrificing none of their speed and providing a small profile to the enemy. Such a 26

combination was hard to create and many failed efforts littered the seabed. The earliest

efforts failed the sea-worthiness requirement because they were only slightly enlarged

versions of their coastal cousins. Eventually, new designs were created but most of these

proved too slow to be effective. To make their boats faster, designers tried to make them

lighter by cutting corners and streamlining the vessels. The result was that many ships

lacked the strength to hold together.

In 1884, two French autonomous (meaning ocean going) torpedo boats, numbered

63 and 64,40 left Le Havre and travelled all the way to Toulon, arriving undamaged even

though they passed through a serious storm in the Mediterranean that had caused trouble

for some of the larger vessels. Finally, the French had a vessel capable of traveling 1,000

nautical miles at a sustained rate of about 22 knots under its own power. The ships were

each 33 meters long, displaced 46 tons and had a crew of twelve.41 These ships even

incorporated a new kind of torpedo launcher with a different type of lip that allowed

torpedoes to be fired from any side of the ship, thus eliminating the need to go straight

towards the enemy ship. The torpedoes they carried were also greatly improved, having

almost twice the speed and explosive power of earlier versions. These ships were

revolutionary, but they still lacked the ability to remain at sea indefinitely. They also

continued to have problems staying together and even later models regularly fell apart

39Ibid.p.l73 40 These two boats were referred to as Thorneycroft boats, named after the place where they were constructed. (Ibid.p. 115) 41 Ibid.p.133 27

under pressure. For example, the French Torpedo Boat 102 capsized and was lost, and

Torpedo Boat 110 was broken in half by nothing more dangerous than an ocean wave.

Eventually, design issues were solved but the autonomous boat only became relatively reliable with the building of Torpedo Boat 126 in 1889.42 Although still flawed these

ships showed enormous potential as seaborne torpedo craft.

Some naval thinkers argued that the autonomous torpedo boat was simply a step in the wrong direction. Because of compromises that such ocean-capable vessels had to make, they likely remained five times the target with half the speed at ten times the cost.43 One of the most well known and respected critics was Stepan Osipovich Makarov,

Vice-Admiral of the Russian Imperial Navy. Makarov devised and tested a torpedo boat

alternative as early as 1876, when he proposed converting the fast steamship Velikii

Kniaz Konstantin into a sort of mother ship, or carrier, for torpedo boats. A year later, the Velikii Kniaz Konstantin had its baptism by fire during the Russo-Turkish War

(1877). Although the battle may have been a fiasco, the use of the torpedo boat carrier proved efficient and effective. The carrier could hold four vessels, transporting them to the point of battle and then lowering them within a minute and hoisting them back into position within six minutes.45 The poor performance of the individual torpedo boats did nothing to diminish the success of the delivery system that had successfully transported

42Ibid.p.l73 43 Makarov, Discussion of Questions in Naval Tactics.p.267 44 Actually, the ship was a mixture of new autonomous Whitehead torpedo craft and older spar torpedo vessels. 28

them to and from the battlefield. Many nations took note and torpedo boat carriers evolved within many navies as an alternative to ocean-going autonomous boats.

In 1883, the French used the torpedo boat carriers Mytho and Annamite to first transport boats armed with spar torpedoes from Europe to China and then to carry out several successful attacks on the Chinese Navy. It would be the last use of pre-Whitehead torpedo technology in combat.46 During the 1880s, the French ordered the construction of four more such vessels and even a larger cruiser-class carrier, the Foudre.41 Britain became concerned about the danger such vessels posed should they be ferried over to launch attacks in the dead of night on British naval vessels at anchor. This was, in part, what prompted the Naval Defence Act of 1889,4S which not only increased coastal defence fortifications but also resulted in the lone British attempt to create a carrier of its own. The HMS Vulcan could carry and launch six torpedo boats and proved so successful that it was still being given a combat role as late as World War II.49

There were also attempts to combine large ship classes and the torpedo. The

British were the first to experiment with a torpedo when they attempted to create the first , HMS Polyphemus, launched in 1881.5 The ship was perfect in most respects. It was fast, at 17 knots much faster than most ships its size. It

45 Makarov, Discussion of Questions in Naval Tactics.p.267 46 Ropp, The Development of a Modern Navy : French Naval Policy 1871 -1904.p. 161 47Ibid.p.l73 48 Marder, The Anatomy of British Sea Power: A History of British Naval Policy in the Pre- Dreadnought Era, 1880-1905.p. 119 49 Archibald and Woodward, The Metal Fighting Ship in the Royal Navy : 1860-1970.p.53 50 Clowes and Markham, The Royal Navy : A History from the Earliest Times to the Present.pAQ 29

displaced 2,640 tons, was well armoured from bow to stern, and carried three submerged

Whitehead launchers. The only problem with HMS Polyphemus was that it was extremely

costly. Even the British lacked the finances to mass-produce such ships and the French knew better than to try. Instead, the French decided to build a more economical scout

cruiser of 1,700 tons, armed with only torpedoes and two small four-inch guns. The

Milan carried on the tradition of torpedo vessels being guinea pigs for new technologies

and it was thus the fastest capital ship in the world (at 18 knots) as well as one of the first

all-steel vessel in existence.51 It was followed by four smaller 1,200-ton .

The use of the term 'Torpedo Boat Destroyer' (TBD) began in 1892, in reference

to four new vessels under construction by the British navy, designed with the sole

CO function of hunting down and destroying other torpedo craft. By the 1920s, this new

CO

class of ship was referred to simply as 'destroyer', a title which it retains today. The

first of these new ships, the Havoc, was 185 feet long, displaced 275 tons, and was armed

with a single 12-pounder, 3 six-pounders and 3 18-inch torpedo tubes, and had a top

speed of 27 knots.54 One hundred and four additional destroyers were built by the British

in the 1890s alone, all for the sole purpose of protecting Britain from the 'torpedo menace'. Destroyers were the only class of ship in existence fast enough to catch a motor

51 Ropp, The Development of a Modern Navy : French Naval Policy 1871-1904.p. 130 52 George, History of Warships : From Ancient Times to the Twenty-First Century.p. 134 "Ibid.p.134 54Ibid.p.l35 30

torpedo boat and armed with the right blend of light quick-firing guns to engage and destroy such vessels.

Britain was not the sole navy to conclude that the only vessel able to hunt torpedo boats was another torpedo boat. Navies the world over began to rely on a strong standing force of destroyer escorts to keep other such vessels away from their fleets and commerce. Both the United States and Germany built their first destroyers in 1896, while

France launched its first in 1899, and Japan, Russia and Italy in 1902. These destroyers were effective but they remained too small to stay at sea for long and had trouble offering complete protection for their charges. As the First Sea Lord Walter Kerr pointed out in

1901, "Destroyers were not intended to accompany the fleet at sea but were designed to operate from bases against the torpedo boats of the enemy also operating from a base."55

Not until the British constructed the 'River' classes of destroyers (each type was named after a different river) in 1902 did the destroyer become a true ocean-going vessel, realizing the aspirations of the many failed attempts that had come before. These vessels were almost twice the size of previous craft, often around 500 tons and armed with four

12-pounders and two 18-inch torpedo tubes. These ships also incorporated the newly developed turbine into their design. The Turbina, a motor torpedo boat launched by the

British in 1897, was the first military vessel fitted with a turbine. The increased speed in a far smaller package proved a very attractive proposition within the British forces. With its

Lambert, Sir John Fisher's Naval Revolution.pJ9 31

newly found sea-keeping ability, the destroyer was finally able to take on the all- encompassing role its proponents had long advocated.

Admiral 'Jackie' Fisher was one of the first to try to tap this new potential during his time as First Sea Lord and head of the British Admiralty (from 1904 until 1910).

Whereas the Royal Navy had always viewed its battleships as the pride of the fleet,

Fisher began to place ever more emphasis on submarines, cruisers and, finally, torpedo boats. He viewed the French autonomous torpedo boats, as well as their many torpedo- armed cruisers, as a direct threat to the British navy. He stated, "It will be simply suicidal for any battleship squadron to cruise without an attendant destroyer flotilla."56 Once in power he quickly instigated a new flotilla defence based on ever-increasing numbers of torpedo capable vessels that would participate in the active defence and engagement of enemy vessels and commerce. By 1910, nearly 6 million pounds were devoted to new constructions and a full 20 percent of that went solely to the creation of motor torpedo boats. Fisher incorporated new developments and innovations, transforming many boats into submersible craft capable of surprise and damage while also experimenting in new types of torpedoes and propulsion.

Admiral Fisher appreciated not only the torpedo boat's enormous destructive potential towards military vessels but also its impact on commerce. He saw French naval power as a direct threat to British commerce and viewed commercial defence as one of the primary roles which the new destroyers would be best designed to fulfill. While this 32

belief may have proved prophetic in predicting the German U-boat offensives, it was in fact false with respect to France. French naval thinkers, like Admiral Theophile Aube, had proposed such an idea decades before Fisher (during the 1880s) but it had been discredited by the even greater prophetic views of Admiral Bourgeois. Bourgeois had correctly identified the international impact of destroying neutral shipping. Torpedo craft were too lightly armed and armoured to be able to effectively board and search every

British merchant, and if they tried, British merchants would be likely to respond by secretly arming themselves with light munitions sufficient to destroy any torpedo boat that got close enough to board. He further noted that British commerce was often carried by neutrals, and since it was impossible to search or confirm every target as British, commerce raiding would inevitably lead to the sinking of neutral vessels and bring them into the war as Britain's allies. He pointed out the practical limitation of the torpedo and the ease with which it would be spotted if fired by a surface vessel as well as the ease with which it could be dodged, when spotted, should the merchant ship change speed or

57 zigzag.

By 1905, 354 of the British Royal Navy's 572 naval vessels were either motor torpedo boats or their slightly bigger ocean-going counterparts, torpedo boat destroyers.

In Germany, Italy, Russia, and Japan, these vessels made up more than two thirds of the fleets. Of the great powers of the time, the United States built the fewest, 56 torpedo craft

Ibid.p.78 Ropp, The Development of a Modern Navy : French Naval Policy 1871-]904.p. 169 33

of their 116 vessels. France, on the other hand, embraced the torpedo craft and

established a new doctrine called the Jeune Ecole ('Young School') which favoured the

small craft over even the powerful battleships of the day. Five hundred and six of their

588 ships were small torpedo craft. A ship can only be at one place at any time and

wherever the big ships were not, the small fleet torpedo craft became the first and often

last line of defence. The heyday of the torpedo boat would not last long, and by the end of

World War I, these boats were superseded by new battleships, submarines and mines.

However, for a brief moment in time, the torpedo boats held dominance. They helped

shape the modern navy to come.

The torpedo was not the sole factor affecting the evolution of modern naval forces

in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, but the torpedo left its indelible mark in

the case of almost every in use today. Small coastal patrol vessels were like

gnats on the face of battle before the torpedo came and gave them teeth. These newly

feared torpedo boats denied the coast to even the most powerful enemy battleships of the

age. To counter these small coastal vessels, new and larger ocean-capable torpedo boats

were created. Over time, the torpedo boat destroyers widened their naval role, dropped

the first of their cumbersome name, and became known as destroyers. The torpedo

carriers of the nineteenth century also place the development of aircraft carriers of the

twentieth century in an interesting light. Aircraft carriers certainly borrowed little from their predecessors in terms of design but they definitely drew upon the same idea; that of using a large vessel as a maintenance and supply center to transport its shorter legged 34

contents to and from the combat zone. Perhaps the continued existence of torpedo- equipped aircraft on board such carriers can even be seen as a sort of homage to their spiritual predecessor. The role that the submarine came to play in commerce raiding and coastal defence was one originally created with the torpedo boat in mind.

Even the archetypal modern battleship, Fisher's brainchild, HMS Dreadnought, owes much to the torpedo. For one thing, the Dreadnought was armed with five torpedo tubes of its own.58 The Dreadnought was the first of the revolutionary, fast, heavily armoured, turbine-powered, all big-gun battleships. The threat of torpedoes proved to be one of the primary reasons why HMS Dreadnought abandoned traditional close range combat. The Dreadnought's emphasis on speed had as much to do with being fast enough to avoid the swift and potentially deadly torpedo craft as it did with fighting other battleships.59

The torpedo boat was the first design to offer a viable alternative to the increasing size and expense of the battleship. The tiny 'microbe' also challenged established naval thought and practice. Today, the huge battleship is gone, and the seas are patrolled by vessels little more than even a tenth of the size of their hulking predecessors. The small ships 'won' and the motor torpedo boats marked the beginning of this important transition from heavy, large ships to lighter, smaller ones. This victory also marked the creation, evolution and adaptation of a new and extremely versatile weapon system.

Archibald and Woodward, The Metal Fighting Ship in the Royal Navy : 1860-1970.p.67 Lambert, Sir John Fisher's Naval Revolution.p. 126 35

Torpedo vessels redefined the concept of naval power, influencing and 'infecting' every type of military vessel. 36

Chapter 4: Global perspective of the torpedo's emergence

The torpedo and its carrier, the torpedo boat, entered the international stage as a new trade commodity. Navies of the world assessed its potential and its value shot up as naval decision makers were swayed by reasons ranging from practical to political. When

Whitehead created the torpedo in 1868, he demonstrated the new weapon's capabilities to the international community. Through that process he created a marketing foundation that both critics and supporters would build upon. At the same time he also created the distribution network that would allow for almost universal adoption of a single uniform weapon system of incredible complexity. The motor torpedo boat was developed to be the cheapest and most effective delivery system for the torpedo and so the design, effectiveness and total numbers of that torpedo were very much related to arrangements initially arranged by and with Mr. Whitehead directly.

However, while navies may have been reacting to Whitehead's overtures and demonstrations in formulating their initial views, each nation continued through the mid-

1800s to assess the potential of this new weapon package. It was also left to each individual navy to determine whether the torpedo, and the boats which would carry it, would overcome pre-existing biases, for the torpedo boat represented an incredible challenge to traditional navies and their huge armoured floating gun platforms of the time. Small, cheap, highly technical, numerous and with an alternative means of attack 37

than traditional gunnery, the motor torpedo boat was all too often co-opted into pre­ existing naval divides.

Because every navy could buy a Whitehead torpedo, almost every navy did, whether or not they fully supported belief in the torpedo as a powerful weapon of war.

For approximately 300 British pounds, any navy could purchase a Whitehead torpedo, attach it to a naval vessel, and harness its potential for itself. With several such vessels defending a coastline, even the 500,000 British pound battleships of the British Navy would stay well away. By the 1880s, the naval environment became one in which every navy had access to the destructive potential of a torpedo boat.

The nature of monopolistic supply also changed as Whitehead's factories in

Austria, the original sole supplier, had their monopoly of supply steadily diluted by national, government-run factories that had purchased the rights to make Whitehead torpedoes of their own, as well as by a small, but growing, number of successful imitators. Even small navies could choose where and how to acquire the torpedo boats' core ingredient (the torpedo) and even Whitehead began to offer an ever expanding menagerie of variations. Torpedoes of different nations were no longer uniform and the greater diversity of their capabilities led to an ever greater number of specialized craft designed to get the most from each possibility.

Those using or producing the torpedo did not provide the final developmental challenge faced by the torpedo boat. Instead, those seeking personal and professional gains that might be made from torpedo reform provided the final impetus. These war 38

merchants offered up new quick-fire guns, armour and engines in the ever continuing march of technological advancement, claiming ever stronger weapons and devices to minimize and counter the torpedo boat. This last phase is interesting in that while ship building policies throughout the world over may have turned away from the tiny torpedo boat and towards giant warships, in a fundamental way the naval environment remained unchanged: the caution large ships had to practise as a result of the torpedo boat's terrifying potential remained constant. The motor torpedo boat had set a new stage, painting the scenery in its own vibrant colours. Even as the spotlight came to rest back once more upon the battleship, the torpedo's threat remained.

The Early Years

Robert Whitehead developed, produced and marketed the first effective autonomous torpedo to the nations of the world and for many years he was its sole supplier. As a result the torpedo boat was initially a delivery system which could exist only after its respective navy had dealt with Mr. Whitehead. This makes him one of the central focal points in understanding the torpedo boat's initial development and the initial naval communities' perceptions and reactions. Whitehead personally visited respective buyers to demonstrate his new 'fish' torpedo for their consideration. His salesmanship and its performance during those tests were all that navies had to go on when making their initial purchasing decision. Navies were not even allowed to examine the internal 39

workings of the device until and unless they had purchased the exorbitantly priced rights to construct it themselves. Whitehead's dual position as torpedo salesman and source provider played a prime role both in forming initial impressions and in arbitrating the politics of supply and demand; Whitehead could only produce a certain number of torpedoes each year and he chose to whom and where they went. Purchasing the rights to produce the weapon itself did not in itself guarantee the final product. The high degree of skills and technical proficiency located within Whitehead's factories in Austria-Hungary ensured that even nations with factories of their own would still place large orders for torpedoes produced in Austria. By 1880, Whitehead had produced and sold 1,458 torpedoes, not including necessary peripherals, parts and maintenance, for a combined value of approximately 500,000 British pounds. As well, some nations who had purchased production rights continued to pay royalties.6

Financial considerations are important in defining the debate and development surrounding the motor torpedo boat. Whitehead initially offered Austria-Hungary exclusive rights to his new weapon and the Austrian navy showed considerable interest; but, as Austria-Hungary was unable to afford the 300,000 British pound price tag, the torpedo was instead offered up on the international market, and arguably, as a result, the world changed. If matters of money had not had Whitehead looking for multiple markets, the torpedo (and the vessels made to carry it) may have finished off as just

Gray, The Devil's Device : The Story of Robert Whitehead, Inventor of the Torpedo.p.99 40

another failed technological oddity of an era of experimentation, much like early submersibles, the saucer shaped Russian battleships or the American dynamite gun. The difficulties nations had in both legitimately producing and pirating the design would certainly seem to indicate that without the Whitehead torpedoes actually being sold to several countries simultaneously, the supply, and perhaps impact, of such weapons would have been far scarcer.

Austria, to 1880

Robert Whitehead was an English engineer who had been working for the

Austrian Shipbuilding industry since 1849. In 1864, a retired Austrian officer approached him for assistance in revising a design for a coastal fire-ship. This slow tiny ship loaded with explosives controlled with ropes and pulleys from shore quickly permutated into

Whitehead's own torpedo design. Whitehead's work was well respected and he gained a great deal of recognition when the Austrian flagship Ferdinand Max, whose engines he had designed, led the Austrian navy to a decisive victory over a more powerful Italian navy during the battle of Lisa in 1866. Austria-Hungary provided him with further funding and assistance in his research while he continued to forge useful connections with high ranking Austrian naval aristocracy. Austria-Hungary was very receptive to

Whitehead's overtures and encouraged his efforts to center his torpedo production in

Austria, while permitting him a large degree of freedom to market his product abroad. In 41

1869, Austria-Hungary became the first nation to purchase rights to produce the torpedo.

Unfortunately, Austria-Hungary could afford little more as a combination of political and economic factors, as well as the torpedo's comparatively poor performance at the time, left its navy unable to afford the costs of further developing the technology until the

1880s.61

Britain, to 1880

The second nation to purchase the Whitehead design was Whitehead's birth nation. The British Empire, with the largest navy in the world, constantly strove to maintain its naval dominance over the open sea and to be at the forefront of technology.

As Britain appeared to be the ideal customer, Whitehead set up a series of demonstrations for a committee made up of British naval officers in 1871. Their response was telling: the committee reported "that it was unanimously of the opinion that any maritime nation failing to provide itself with submarine locomotive torpedoes would be neglecting a great source for offense and defence". However, this did not mean that everyone viewed the torpedo in a positive light or that the weapon was quickly integrated into the British navy.

Even after recognizing its potential, several influential people shared the opinion of the

61 Lawrence Sondhaus, Naval Warfare, 1815-1914 (New York: Routledge, 2001).p.48 62 Gray, The Devil's Device : The Story of Robert Whitehead, Inventor of the Torpedo.pA3 42

First Lord Frederick Richards, who while speaking of the Whitehead's torpedo, commented that "No man ever did his country a worse service..."

The torpedo was a direct challenge to the established position of naval dominance held by Britain. The committee also recognized that the torpedo had the potential "to reduce to one common level the naval power of the greatest and most insignificant nations".64 Some naval personnel took to the new device but even as men like

Commander Fisher (future First Sea Lord) took over control of Britain's torpedo training facility in 187265 or others, like Sir Nathaniel Barnaby (Director of Naval Construction), advocated for new types of ships and doctrine, many chose to ignore the new development. The British Torpedo Committee of 1873 was made up of supportive members who again tried to raise awareness and address the threat torpedoes represented, but even their assertion that"... the most powerful ship is liable to be destroyed by a torpedo projected from a vessel of the utmost comparative insignificance"66 remained largely ignored. In the 1870s the torpedo was only one of many new developments and for navies still grappling with changes such as the already decades-old adaptation of steam over sail, the torpedo was not taken seriously. Add to that the fact that at this point in time Whitehead shamelessly exaggerated his weapon's capabilities and his torpedo

63 Ranft, Technical Change and British Naval Policy, 1860-1939.p.23 64 Ibid.p.25 65 Ibid.p.24 56 Rolf Hobson, Imperialism at Sea : Naval Strategic Thought, the Ideology of Sea Power, and the Tirpitz Plan, 1875-1914 (Boston: Brill Academic, 2002).p.32 43

was of limited reliability and slower than many of the ships it might be used against, it is hardly surprising that the British navy thought and did little with their new weapon in that first decade, constructing only one torpedo boat, the Polyphemus, during that first decade. Most within the British navy dismissed the torpedo and the torpedo craft as no different from what had come before, being at worst a nuisance and at best a threat easily contained with the most rudimentary of precautions. In spite of Whitehead's grand finale when he finished his demonstration by blowing a 200 square foot hole below the waterline of a sacrificial coal tanker, many members of the British navy were taking the view that the automotive Whitehead torpedo was no different from any of the stationary explosive torpedoes which had come before. For example, Commander Dawson, writing in 1873, took the view that all forms of the torpedo would do little damage and only serve to cancel out the 'threat of the ram', thus restoring the status quo. "Ultimately, when the torpedo is employed by all ships, its office will be to keep hostile fleets apart, and thus to render the ram useless, whilst the fate of battle must be decided by the ancient arbiter of naval combats, the great gun." Of the Whitehead torpedo itself, he commented only that

"to turn loose such indiscriminating weapons would, therefore, be a desperate expedient, only to be resorted to in the last extremity."69 Another officer, writing a year later, described the destruction of the coal ship before once more brushing aside the torpedo

Thomas Earl Brassey Brassey, [the British Navy: Its Strength, Resources and Administration.], Second edition [of vol. 3]. ed. (pp. xii. 586. Longmans & Co.: London, 1883).p.72 68 W. Dawson, Future Naval Battles (London, 1871).p. 177 69Ibid.p.l80 44

issue as nothing more than an unrealistic controlled experiment and concluding that

"notwithstanding the skill and ingenuity displayed in the construction and working of the

70 machine, its intrinsic value would seem to us to be overrated."

France, to 1880

When Whitehead sold his idea to France for 288,000 francs in 1873, he made a sale that would redefine the French navy. France had existed within the shadow of the

British navy even before the Napoleonic wars. The torpedo now offered them a way to change the balance. As a result, while England may have sought to discredit or mitigate the Whitehead torpedo's claim as a great leveller among naval powers, France instead embraced this stance, believing that this weapon represented a much desired end to a long-standing quest for naval superiority. France was not only England's closest neighbour, but also a great naval power that had clashed often with Britain and continually had come up short against British naval strength. The challenge facing French naval planners was that: We do not have the means (and who does?) to be a first-class power at the same time on land and at sea. But it is indispensable that our army be strong enough to fight that of Germany ... To think that with the twenty-five million francs a battleship costs, we could buy and maintain the horses we need in order to have as much cavalry as the Germans, and that a division of

E.R.F., Torpedoes (London, 1872).p.475 cavalry will weigh more in the balance than the most formidable battleship.71

However, in the upheaval of the industrial revolution and the flood of new developments appearing in the naval arena, French naval planners saw a potential for victory. Even as early as 1822, French officer Henry-Joseph Paixhans championed the necessity to "procure military advantages of such importance as to obtain an immediate and irresistibly decisive superiority"72 which would "realize the sudden and decisive naval superiority which is the object of our researches." For Paixhans, this drive would result in the invention of explosive shells which not only gave France a brief window of superiority but also served to quickly make any warship made of wood good for little more than kindling within the line of battle.74 From others in the French navy there came a plethora of advancements ranging from paddlewheels to screw propellers to armour out of materials like iron, steel and even ceramics to improved weapons such as large guns, small quick firing guns, rams and also torpedoes. Even as the decades passed the French government advocated the position that:

If France is condemned by her numerical inferiority in sailors to admit that there is a power that can have more sailing ships than we can, the difference could disappear if we use another force which the industrial genius of France can and must create.

71 Ropp, The Development of a Modern Navy : French Naval Policy 1871 -1904. p. 30-31 72 Hobson, Imperialism at Sea : Naval Strategic Thought, the Ideology of Sea Power, and the TirpitzPlan, 1875-1914.p.5S 73 Ibid.p.58 George, History of Warships : From Ancient Times to the Twenty-First Century.p.66 75 Ropp, The Development of a Modern Navy : French Naval Policy 1871-1904.^1 A basic problem quickly became evident: as each new revolutionary idea came forth, the ships which had come before were indeed diminished as had been hoped but whereas Britain could afford to rebuild a cutting-edge battle fleet every decade or so,

France discovered that it could not. By the 1870s the French fleet was underfunded and little cared for and in 1872 a tide of poor public opinion and government cuts saw the fleet shrink from 439 to 137 ships.76 As a French budgetary official reported to the newly installed government: "France hoped she had saved in her fleet a force for the future....

Here as elsewhere, the Empire had raised appearance of grandeur but left only ruins, and, after so many years and so much money spent, the fleet is still to be created."77 Unable to match British naval power, French thinkers searched for alternative means to combat the overwhelming power of the British navy. In the late 1860s a French Captain named

Louis-Antoine-Richild Grivel believed that he had found the answer: the epic battle between French and British forces was one which should simply never occur.

Should not fleet warfare or the warfare of the big battalions... be resolutely avoided as ruinous for the nation that is less rich in sailors and ships as well as in the means of renewing them? ... It is on account of France's failure to understand such a clear situation that she has suffered all the maritime defeats of her history.... Regardless of the inventions that may appear, in the past or in the future... it is not within the power of any human force to displace suddenly... a well-established naval preponderance... based on the customs, the geographic situation, and the vocation of a people.... Our navy cannot permit itself any illusions regarding an inequality so clearly revealed by geography, history, and statistics.7

Hobson 97 Ropp, The Development of a Modern Navy : French Naval Policy 1871-1904.p. 120 Ibid.20 47

Grivel suggested that, rather than fight a losing fleet engagement, it would be better if:

As soon as one becomes preponderant at sea, one's maritime strategy can, with relative security, give itself a sort of carte blanche to choose between the operations which constitute maritime warfare... blockade the littoral of [the enemy], sweep from the seas its foreign trade, and undertake a major diversion in its rear.79

At the most fundamental level, Grivel believed that "commercial warfare, the most economical form of war for the poorer fleet, is at the same time the one best suited to restore peace promptly, in that it strikes directly ... at the very sources of the prosperity of the enemy."80 Guerre de course (attack on trade) became the foundation of the Jeune

' Q 1

Ecole ('Young School') of French naval thought. The idea was to build ships optimized towards commercial warfare at the time. Torpedo boats with their deadly torpedoes would serve the purpose well.

France had been experimenting with spar and towed torpedo vessels since 1866 and had even established a torpedo center at Boyardville in 1869 to study and teach how such vessels could be used.82 However it was not until the appearance of the Whitehead torpedo that such weapons began to acquire a credible reputation.

XUIVl. VS 0 Ibid.p.20 1 Ibid.p.20 2 Ibid.p.lll 48

France expanded the use of the torpedo from a primarily defensive coastal armament into an offensive seagoing weapon. Under the direction of men such as

Gougeard, the French navy began to create a new special type of vessel in the 1880s: a

"true seagoing ship ... whose principal weapon would be the torpedo." The French were responsible for imagining the autonomous seagoing torpedo boat and creating its intellectual foundation. This vision would have great influence on the technology and improvements in design required to take the torpedo boat into the high seas.

Italy, to 1880

Italy purchased its first Whitehead torpedo in 1873 but while the nation's coastal situation was exceptional in its extensiveness, Italy developed few new tactics or modes of thoughts and seems to have lacked a rationalized building program. "In Italy torpedo ships also enjoyed considerable favor during the 1880s, and even commerce-destroying was greatly in vogue, though nobody seemed to know exactly whose commerce Italy was going to destroy."

Italy feared invasion from enemy nations, especially France and England, and therefore created a defensive fleet to protect its coast. In 1872 during the last stages of Italian unification and the capture of Rome from the Pope, France had

Ibid.p.130 Ibid.p.131 49

sent several warships to Italy which Italy had been unable to oppose. This caused

Italy to re-evaluate its emphasis on land forces, resulting in a Permanent

Commission that drew up a general plan for Italy's defenses. The proposed plan stated:

Superior at sea but inferior on land, we could not prevent the invasion of our territory. Even the most powerful army unaided by a fleet, however, would be unable to guarantee our extended coasts or defend our islands against enemy attacks. Our army itself would not possess the necessary freedom of action if it were menaced at its bases.85

Torpedo boats were the only economical answer to Italy's problematic coastal defence.

Other countries, to 1880

Smaller nations with protected ports and harbours instinctively adopted, with little apparent prodding, pontificating or proselytizing, one important use of the Whitehead torpedo. The torpedo offered an affordable means to deter larger and more powerful navies from attacking a nation's coastal territory. Whitehead marketed his weapon for calm and relatively shallow waters rather than for oceans. The choppy Atlantic was almost impossible for usage at the time because of its rough waters and freezing temperatures, both of which played havoc with the device. Likewise, the torpedo at the time required its carrier to get quite close to the target enemy. Small fast ships seemed

Ibid.p.75 Makarov, Discussion of Questions in Naval Tactics.p. Ill 50

ideal and navies could easily adapt with ease whatever proto-torpedo type vessels or even

tiny patrol or transportation vessels to use as torpedo boats.

The torpedo represented a very large explosive threat even when at rest and while

nations hoped it would make contact with enemy battleships they were less enthused with

the idea of this threat resting within one of the few numbers of their own expensive

warships. There were still many sceptics in numerous navies. The Chief of the Austrian

Naval Constructive Department, Herr Bomako, continued to champion the battleship and

ram because he felt that the "effect of the aggressive torpedo is, in my opinion, doubtful

and insecure, and may easily endanger the ships of its own fleet."87 Others, including

those from different navies, seemed to agree.

The torpedo appeared to many an almost inconsequential development for navies

that spent millions on each battleship. However, Whitehead proved to be quite an adept

salesman and most critics were willing to at least concede it as an equal to other existing

stationary torpedo types already in service. By 1880, he had sold 1458 torpedoes to the

following countries.88

Country Torpedoes sold by 1880 Britain 256 Russia 250 France 218 Germany 203

Royal United Service Institution (Great Britain), "Journal of the Royal United Service Institution," (London: W. Mitchell and Son, 1876). p.470 88 Gray, The Devil's Device : The Story of Robert Whitehead, Inventor of the Torpedo, p. 122 51

Austria 100 Denmark 83 Greece 70 Italy 70 Portugal 50 Argentina 40 Belgium 40 Chile, Norway & Sweden 78 TOTAL 1458

This breakdown is important as many of the nations making large purchases

adapted it solely to protect their ports and harbours. Incorporated into the system of forts,

mines and coastal , the torpedo boat quickly became a prominent, and then even

integral, aspect of coastal protection. Eventually the torpedo boat was modified to include

coastal enhancements such as booms, search lights, customized nets, and quick-fire guns.

1880 on

In this chapter, the torpedo boat and the intellectual debate which resulted have been considered by nation; however, while each nation did come to its unique conclusions the discourse was not limited by nationalistic lines. Throughout this period of uncertainty and technological upheaval, navies paid very close attention to what other navies were saying and doing. With great cordiality and good grace, even enemy admirals would happily sit across from one and another and discuss everything from technology to family affairs. Books from Mahan to Makarov and Colomb to Corbett were 52

translated into a host of languages for navies abroad almost as quickly as they were published in their own. News correspondents were only too happy to publish the musing of any visiting high ranking naval officer and everyone enjoyed trying to figure out what would become the next naval "big thing". It is therefore somewhat surprising that the initial response to the Whitehead torpedo was generally lukewarm, at best. Even men like

Fisher and Tirpitz, who eventually became entrenched in torpedo technology and its potential, initially gave it only the most tentative of approvals before reiterating their preference for existing torpedo-like devices such as the towing and spar torpedoes.89 Part of this has to do with the actual capabilities of the weapon in question. Tirpitz wrote in his memoires that he believed:

Stosch [head of the German Navy Department of the War Ministry from 1871 to 1883] had introduced the fish torpedo over-hastily and had bought large numbers of them before they were really serviceable for war. The use of the torpedo still constituted "a greater danger to the man who launched it than to his enemy."90

There was also the problem of Whitehead's shameless over-promotion and secrecy as to his torpedo's workings, since naval personnel could at least understand and utilize their existing explosive devices as they desired while the Whitehead, once launched, would work or not work primarily due to its own merits rather than anything the crew might be doing.91 As Fisher pointed out:

E.R.F., Torpedoes.pAl'4 Gray, The Devil's Device : The Story of Robert Whitehead, Inventor of the Torpedo.p.93 Dawson, Future Naval Battles.p. 180 53

Although this torpedo has been said to prove effectual as far as 2,000 feet in any required direction, it must be remembered that Mr. Whitehead's successful experiments have taken place in: Smooth water Without any tide At a fixed object From a stationary vessel and that, once started, his Torpedo is beyond control and will blow up anyone it comes across, In addition to this it is extremely delicate to handle and manipulate and requires extreme care to prevent any clogging of the Pneumatic Apparatus. But at the same time it must be conceded that it is a wonderful invention.

However, the primary reason why the Whitehead torpedo initially caused a ripple rather than a tsunami among naval thinkers during that first decade has to do with another

aspect of this truly revolutionary device. In many nations where the torpedo was

adopted, it was simply transplanted onto the battleships already in the water and left as one more weapon system among many. It was not until it was transplanted onto the deck of a small ship with room for little else that the realization began to permeate that this tiny, innocuous little vessel bobbing up and down, could sink a BATTLESHIP!

Whitehead's invention and the emergence of the torpedo boat was the starting point for future navies towards redefining the naval land/seascape.

Britain, Russia and France engaged in much more active debate than did other countries about the worth of the torpedo and torpedo boat, largely because they were unable to fully utilize the torpedo for the standard coastal defence role. Russia simply had

Gray, The Devil's Device : The Story of Robert Whitehead, Inventor of the Torpedo.p.%4 93 P. H. Colomb, Naval Warfare, Its Ruling Principles and Practice Historically Treated (Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1990). 54

too much coast to defend, preferring to build naval assets which could be concentrated in trouble spots and moved easily from coast to coast. France had a coastline too rough and wide-open for conventional coastal assets. Also, France was committed to combating the

Pax Britannica by cutting Britain's lifeblood of trade. The idea was as old as piracy but

France was the first to add the torpedo to such a mix. Britain had ports and harbours to defend, but just as the French had seen the vulnerability of trade so to had British thinkers, like Vice-Admiral Colomb, who had always been quick to point out that for a colonial empire, defence of the British coast was only the beginning of "the grim realities of modem maritime war to a people dependent on the sea for daily bread".94

Admiral Colomb, a well respected military thinker, was one of many who continued to argue that the torpedo had not altered any fundamental precepts of naval strategy. He acknowledged the significance of a small vessel destroying larger and more expensive ships in times of war but also, rightly, pointed out the dismal efforts of the torpedo boat in conflicts such as the 1891 Civil War in Chile and the Sino-Japanese War of 1894, where the threat or actual potential for destruction of battleships by torpedo had not altered the end result at all as the torpedo boat's inherent fragility left it unable to directly oppose enemy operations. In the case of Chile, the (two) modern torpedo boats could effectively attack only at night; accordingly, the enemy's landing went unopposed when carried out during the day. That army had then proceeded with their advance and

Hobson, Imperialism at Sea : Naval Strategic Thought, the Ideology of Sea Power, and the Tirpitz Plan, 1875-1914.pM 55

the torpedo boat had been unable to affect the outcome even as other warships had lent

artillery support and supplies as needed.95

Colomb had a significant influence on England's naval policy and he helped bring the British naval policy focus back towards the seas rather than continuing its endemic preoccupation with the English Coast. He was one of the first in Britain to point out that trade had changed the nature of England: "In 1813, the British people lived on the

produce of their soil. In 1875, that people required side by side with every pound's worth

of raw cotton for manufacture, one pound's worth of raw corn or flour for their

sustenance."

There had been a 260 per cent increase in international trade between 1850 and

187097, and this increase continued as time went on (65 per cent increase in seven years

no

to 1896/97 and the following eight years increased 78 per cent ), making the British Isles

ever more dependent on the safe and steady delivery of foreign trade. In this environment

of ever growing dependency Colomb was one of the first to voice loudly and steadily his

concern: It is beyond dispute that the general welfare of the Empire depends chiefly upon its commercial prosperity, and therefore we conceive that our regular forces abroad should be distributed in time of peace in such a manner as

Colomb, Naval Warfare, Its Ruling Principles and Practice Historically Treated.pA97 96 Hobson, Imperialism at Sea : Naval Strategic Thought, the Ideology of Sea Power, and the TirpitzPlan, !875-1914.pM 97 Ibid.p.85 98 Ibid.p.33 56

would best secure protection to our commerce in the event of sudden 99

war.

However, like many naval thinkers to encounter the torpedo, he was unable to

find a place for it within his construct of how navies should behave. He may have

overlooked the fact that that when viewing history climactic events like naval battles,

wholesale military offensives and troop landings are not only important when they occur

but also when they do not. No nation's coastland was ever threatened where a significant

number of torpedo boats were deployed100. A torpedo boat could not project power onto

land of anything near the degree of the huge guns of a battleship and it could carry barely

enough supplies for itself, let alone for any sort of landing force; however, it could deny

those types of ships access. The coastal defence torpedo boat was never a vessel of sea

power but rather of sea power denial.

Britain had long been in the habit of raiding enemy ports and harbours during

hostilities. Its navy would weaken the seagoing elements of the enemy nation while it

also imposed British power upon what was often the opposing nation's economic and

trade center. Once these nations obtained the torpedo and put the British mighty and

expensive vessels at risk, the British had no choice but to stay well away.

Britain may have been focused on sea power but other nations, such as France, had a very different goal. Even as early as 1849, Henry Paixhans had advocated a fleet

John Charles Ready Sir K. C. M. G. Colomb, The Protection of Our Commerce, and Distribution of Our Naval Forces Considered, [by J. C. R. Colomb.] (London, 1867).p.iv 100 From the sea lanes at least... 57

capable "not of dominating but of preventing all domination of the seas".101 It is here, in

France, within their ideology that the application of a torpedo boat advanced. While it

was true that torpedo boats did not impact land-bound conflict during the late nineteenth

century, they did ensure that no enemy's battleships or troop carriers did either. This is not to say that Colomb was wrong, as he was a strong advocate for the establishment of harbour defences including forts, mines, booms and, of course, torpedo boats. However, he failed to recognize that the torpedo boat was itself something special. Of all the

defensive units integrated into harbour and port defence, only the torpedo boat was

capable of actively seeking out enemies while posing a viable threat at minimal cost.

Colomb wrote about how new steamships could choose their landings well away from

mines and sea barricades and how enemy ships and armies could choose to stay well out

of range of defending forts, but he did not seem to appreciate that had the defender possessed a squadron of one or two dozen torpedo boats, all landings would have been

costly; wherever those ships would have approached, they would have found deadly

coastal torpedo defenders in wait. Yes, a torpedo launch from a single ship or two could be easily avoided if seen, but avoiding a swarm of such attacks would have been a very

different matter.

Although Vice Admiral Colomb's influence did little to develop the torpedo boat

in his own country, he provided great impetus for the British Navy to expand its influence

Hobson, Imperialism at Sea : Naval Strategic Thought, the Ideology of Sea Power, and the Tirpitz Plan, 1875-1914.p.60 58

and increase its coaling bases and seagoing fleet. Other nations found the torpedo boat useful as a David who could slay mighty Goliath. In an adverse way, the navy of giants that Colomb supported served to encourage torpedo development by other nations that were threatened by British sea power. This reverse encouragement was especially prevalent when the huge scale of British construction forced other nations to seek alternate means of defence. Competing with British battleship construction became unfeasible due to Britain's government policies like the two-power standard.

Russia

Russia purchased the Whitehead torpedo in 1876 and although Russia acquired its torpedoes later than most countries, it was in fact the first to use them. By 1877, war was looming and Russia made the decision to purchase 110 torpedo boats and put them to use armed with everything from spar and Harvey torpedoes to the new Whitehead autonomous torpedo. There was not a large amount of debate as Russia required firepower and anything larger than a torpedo boat would take too long to produce. This was one of the torpedo boats strengths and would be a reoccurring theme in times of international tension. (In the 1890s, both Germany103 and England104 turned to the

Lambert, Sir John Fisher's Naval Revolution.p.2\ 103 Ropp, The Development of a Modern Navy : French Naval Policy 1871-1904.p.l35 104 Marder, The Anatomy of British Sea Power: A History of British Naval Policy in the Pre- Dreadnought Era, 1880-1905.p. 168 59

torpedo boat as the means to quickly build sea power to either pacify or defend from attack.) To pioneer the use of these new vehicles, Russia assigned an enthusiastic young officer, Stepan Osipovich Makarov. As a result, Makarov is credited as having "created and developed both the torpedo boat and its tactics"105 during the Turko-Russian War of

1877.

As then lieutenant, Makarov was the first and only person to command a flotilla of torpedo boats in wartime prior to 1894 and the Sino-Japanese War.106 He is also credited with directing the first Whitehead torpedo to sink an enemy vessel in wartime.

After several failed attempts a Whitehead torpedo finally sank the revenue steamer

Intikbah107 during a night attack on the Turkish fleet in Batum Harbour on September

25th 1878.108 However, his primary claim to fame is his contribution to naval thought, especially with respect to the intellectual development of the torpedo boat and other naval material.109

If Farragut is worthy of being called the Nelson of ironclads, Makarov certainly deserves a similar status for torpedo work; the planning of torpedo attacks require quite as much brain and ability as the same sort of

105 Makarov, Discussion of Questions in Naval Tactics.xix 106 Ibid.p.xix 107 There is some controversy over this sinking because of the contention of the opposing commander that none of his "ironclads" had been sunk by enemy torpedo. However since the retired and repurposed impromptu vessel hardly qualified as an ironclad it seems reasonable to assume that both Makarov's claim to have sunk the vessel and Hobart Pasha's contention that none of his ironclads were harmed are both viable. 108 Gray, The Devil's Device : The Story of Robert Whitehead, Inventor of the Torpedo.p. 113 109 Geoffrey Till, Seapower: A Guide for the Twenty-First Century (London ; Portland, Or.: Frank Cass, 2004).p.39 thing with ironclads. In a sense - the torpedo boat being a novel weapon - it requires more.110

Makarov took a technically oriented view of naval tactics and strategy. However, unlike many of his era he did not believe that technology should determine all. Torpedo boats might be perfect for attacks on commerce but unless that was to a nation's benefit, it should not bother building them. He advocated examining naval process as a whole, rather than piecemeal.

Within the analysis of "developing technique and conditions to which ships should correspond"1'\ he recognized that

... technical conditions to which ships should correspond would have to be established, and that every effort should be made to realize them in ship construction ... Not only is uncertainty to be feared as regards types of vessels and systems of armor ... but in other matters, e.g., upon the question as to whether each ship should carry torpedo boats; whether she should have a net protection from torpedoes, etc. Some believed in torpedo boats, and now they either carry them or do not carry them.

Makarov valued torpedo warfare, believing that it aligned well to the character of the Russian seaman.

"Torpedo attack closely resembles guerrilla warfare, and therefore well suits the disposition of the Russian seaman. We may not possess the powers of systematization that characterize other western nations, but when war begins, the Russian knows that lack of organization may be replaced by personal initiative in the commanders. This is a quality which is priceless in a torpedo attack."113

Jane, The Imperial Russian Navy.p.201 111 Makarov, Discussion of Questions in Naval Tactics. 112 Ibid. 113 Ibid.p.267 61

Although Makarov was the only person able to make the claim of utilizing torpedo boats in battle, there was another commander who could also, at the least, make a claim of having experience with torpedo boats in wartime. Augustus Charles Hobart was the Pacha (commander) of the Turkish Fleet and the target of all of Makarov's attacks.

He successfully defended his large battleships against the torpedo threat, losing only a single old former revenue vessel repurposed as a guard vessel.

Hobart was an influential and dynamic personality, as well as an English noble and retired captain of the British Navy. He was well known and often quoted by naval figures seeking to critique and discredit the use of the torpedo.114 However, although his influence at the time served to limit and restrain torpedo development, he also pioneered thoughts about torpedo defence and protection. Hobart's works is quite compelling and, save for a single opposing basic premise, oddly prophetic and rather well thought out.

I venture to maintain that the power of the torpedo, as a weapon of offence as well as of defence, is enormously exaggerated. Were it not so, one might almost say that naval warfare would soon come to an end altogether, inasmuch as no fleet or ship could resist such a deadly weapon. Blockade of an enemy's port could not be maintained. Vessels could never lie at anchor near an enemy's coast. Fleets could not cruise in the neighbourhood of hostile ships carrying torpedo - boats. Ports defended by torpedoes could not be attacked, harbours and estuaries could not be approached; and, in fact, none of the old systems of naval warfare could be put into execution... The sailor, although brave and cool in a fair fight, would be in constant dread of being hurled into the air without even the chance of striking a blow or firing a shot in self- defence. The writer of this, while commanding squadrons manned by men who have not only the unsurpassed courage of their race, but who have recourse when in danger to the almighty word kismet, and only think of danger after its arrival—

Ropp, The Development of a Modern Navy : French Naval Policy 1871-1904.p. 116 had only his own humble idea of courage without kismet, and thus felt all the anxiety day and night, for nearly a year, of not knowing at what moment he might receive the happy despatch by being blown into the air.115

Save for the initial denial, Hobart's account may be taken as one of the more

succinct and complete accounts of exactly how the torpedo boat would come to change

naval warfare and the difficulties that navies would have to face in future campaigns. No

large ships would attempt a large scale attack on an enemy coast defended with flotillas

of coastal defence torpedo craft and in every major ship engagement the fight would be

moderate out of fear of an enemy torpedo attack.'i6 Hobart developed most of the basic

tactics that fleets would come to use in defending their battleships from torpedo boats, but his analysis was flawed. Although he quickly adapted his fleet in the face of a new threat and was able to competently evaluate its capabilities at the time, he failed to

address the torpedo boat's quickly evolving capabilities. He had been attacked by hastily

cobbled small craft with a variety of different torpedo type weapons. The ships could go

only six knots117 and the torpedo could only reach only 20 knots.'18 In the time he

115 Augustus Charles Hon called Hobart Pasha Hobart, The Torpedo Scare. Experiences During the Turco-Russian War... Reprinted from X201cblackwood's Magazine,\201d with Additional Matte\0301r (pp. 50. W. Blackwood & Sons: Edinburgh & London, 1885).p.737 116 John Rushworth Jellicoe Jellicoe, A. Temple Patterson, and John Ernest Troyte Harper, The Jellicoe Papers; Selections from the Private and Official Correspondence of Admiral of the Fleet Earl Jellicoe ofScapa, Publications of the Navy Records Society, (Shortlands (Kent),: Navy Records Society, 1966).p.l02 117 Makarov, Discussion of Questions in Naval Tactics.p.267 118 Gray, The Devil's Device : The Story of Robert Whitehead, Inventor of the Torpedo.p.253 63

continued to publish his views, from 1877 to 1888, the speed of the boats quadrupled11 ,

1 90

size increased by a factor of 15 and the speed and range of the weapon had gone up by

50 per cent along with substantial improvement to reliability, training, accuracy and 19 1

destructive power. Like his opposite number, Makarov, he attempted to figure out what

navies should do in the face of present threats but his defences where grounded only to

what he had used in the past: It was absolutely incumbent on me to take some steps for the safety of the vessels under my command. The means in my power for torpedo defence were unfortunately very limited, but that very fact enabled me to prove that necessity is the mother of invention ... [I] will now relate in detail the plan I applied as a defence in regard to the different points mentioned above—namely, the course to be adopted for the safety of ships of war while blockading an enemy's port, while lying at anchor near an enemy's coast, or while cruising in the neighbourhood of hostile ships blockading. I think that the ships should be always, when convenient, under way, and with their torpedo-nets out, constantly changing their positions so as not to be easily found by the enemy's torpedo - boats : no lights whatever should be shown. Should it be necessary to anchor, I think that the ships should be anchored in small detachments, and a system of defence arranged as follows, placed round each ship or detachment... Now as to lying at anchor near an enemy's coast. In this also I have had considerable experience while at Batoum and its neighbourhood, where I had frequently under my command twelve or fourteen ships, against which the Russians constantly organised torpedo attacks. All their attacks were unsuccessful, for the following reasons...

The little port of Batoum and its town were kept, as I have stated, in perfect darkness. The severest penalties were to be incurred by those who

119 Peter Charles Smith, Hard Lying : The Birth of the Destroyer, 1893-1913 ([Annapolis, MD.]: Naval Institute Press, 1971).p. 20 120 Makarov, Discussion of Questions in Naval Tactics.p.269 121 In theory, opinion and the war; not rank - although by the time Makarov published his book his rank of admiral would have been fairly close to Pacha Hobart. 64

showed a light anywhere, and on several occasions infractions of that rule were punished with great severity...

We improvised a breakwater, consisting of such trees and spars as we could lay our hands on. These trees and spars were anchored in a line verging towards the beach ...122

These torpedo defence ideas were very significant and important as navies attempted to deal with the hydra that Whitehead had offered and that they had adopted.

Everyone had torpedo boats and so counter-measures to those same boats needed to be devised. Hobart's ideas were not necessarily unique but they were backed by real combat experience. His suggestions were very much in keeping with much of what came to be done in war defence in future years, in spite of his contradictory starting point that the

Whitehead torpedo was not a capable weapon of war.

Germany

Germany created its navy with great reluctance and its limited commitment lent itself well to the adoption of the torpedo. At the time of the torpedo's climb to market in the early 1870s, the German navy existed for two primary purposes "... first, in order to protect the overseas trade of Germany and defend the Baltic and North Sea coasts, and second, in order to maintain for the future its European influence against such lands which may only

Hobart, The Torpedo Scare. Experiences During the Turco-Russian War... Reprinted from \201cblackwood's Magazine,\201d with Additional Matte\0301 r.p.740 123Ibid.p.476 65

be reached by sea." Limited funding was provided to make the fleet powerful enough to be considered a respectable force in international affairs, or as Bismarck explained in 1872,

"We must surpass all sea powers of the second rank."125 The torpedo boat came to play an important role as a coastal defender while also offering limited protection to Germanise merchant and overseas commerce until Germany actually acquired colonies, beginning in

1884.126

The size of Germany's navy had always been limited by their need to give first priority to continental and land-bound military concerns. Bismarck neatly summed up this continental focus when he explained to an African explorer in 1888 that, "Your map of

Africa is very nice, indeed, but my map of Africa lies in Europe. Here lies Russia, and here lies France, and we are in the middle; that is my map of Africa." Domestically, the army was far more important than the navy but as expansion overseas acquired more advocates for a German global empire, Germany gained overseas holdings, resulting in more attention to acquire a navy that would effectively defend both the land and resulting commerce.

Stosch, one of the first heads of the newly unified Germany and its fledgling navy, had long advocated the building of the fleet as a direct result of these colonial desires: "We need ships that are also suitable for the offensive protection of the

Hobson, Imperialism at Sea : Naval Strategic Thought, the Ideology of Sea Power, and the TirpitzPlan, 1875-1914.p. 113 125 Ibid.p.115 66

merchant fleet, and the squadrons that we station in distant lands must also contain such ships." Stosch had been a general in the German army. However, between 1872 and 1883 he served as the chief of the imperial admiralty in charge of creating Germany's navy almost from scratch and he was witness to much of the formative torpedo boat experimentation. Emerging from use of torpedoes in coastal defence flotillas, Germany quickly developed tactics that saw the originally defence-oriented boats now participating offensively at the forefront of any engagement. By the end of his time as naval head,

Stosch even come to advocate abandoning larger ships entirely in favour of an integrated force made up equally of small armoured gunboats and the emerging successful torpedo boats. 29 The German navy did not adopt this particular proposal but torpedo boats continued to be an important and integrated part of its fleet while increasing in importance and funding.

As early as the Russo-Turkish War in 1877, Austria-Hungary, halted the export of torpedoes abroad and fear that such embargoes might happen again served as imputes for nations to create their own domestic whitehead torpedo production centers. These various centers engaged in research of development of their own but only so long as they continued to abide by Whitehead's initial contract agreement requiring all developments to be divulged to Whitehead, himself. Thus, even as Whitehead's influence over his

Holger H. Herwig, "Luxury" Fleet: The , 1888-1918, Rev. ed. (London: Ashfield Press, 1987).p.97 127 Ibid.p.97 67

product diminished, the best efforts of each national center was shared and disseminated among the others.

As the technological march progressed, Whitehead was to have a lessening of influence and by his death at age 82, in 1905, nations had largely severed ties with him and instead created their own separate national centers of production. But, there can be little doubt that the torpedo's form and function within torpedo boats continued to rest upon the strong foundation that he had helped to erect.

Torpedo craft had also changed and evolved. The vessels grew faster and larger, even as the torpedo technology upon which they relied also advanced in leaps and bounds, becoming more powerful, longer ranged and more accurate. As the twentieth century began, oil and diesel propulsion developments and communications technology

advances combined to make the torpedo boat a more effective and reliable weapon.

However, the thought dictating the actual use and application of the torpedo boat within the naval arena remained firmly grounded upon the debates surrounding its initial use during the latter half of the nineteenth century.

Conclusion

Hobson, Imperialism at Sea : Naval Strategic Thought, the Ideology of Sea Power, and the Tirpitz Plan, 1875-1914.p. 113 129 Ibid.p.45 68

Naval thinkers of the mid-1800s reacted to the presence of the motor torpedo boat. Whether they supported or criticized its design, the concept of a small vessel with startling new potential was something to be dealt with and theorized about. The debate itself evidenced that this vessel was something foreign and new to the navies of the world and that the navies of the world needed to take note. Even within its beginning niche of coastal defence, the torpedo boat with its powerful torpedoes altered its environment and resulted in significant advancements for both offence and defence. 69

Chapter 5: The torpedo boat's impact on the naval seascape

What was the result of all this thought and experimentation in naval technology?

The age of experimentation passed into an age of established design and directed development. This chapter examines the impact of the torpedo boat as illustrated through an examination of four seminal naval figures at the cusp of the twentieth century. The first is Aube who, as the brief head of the French navy, formulated a navy centered on the torpedo boat. Under his command the theory of commerce warfare advanced to include the formation of a new navy reliant on the torpedo boat and free of the battleship. Next,

American captain and author, Mahan, set out a blueprint for naval supremacy promoting the big battleship. However, the world wide attention it received and the building programs it initiated resulted indirectly to greatly increase standardization of torpedo boat production and their use within fleets worldwide. Tirpitz was instrumental in refining what type of role the torpedo boat would play within naval operations, especially during combat. Finally, Jackie Fisher, the British First Sea Lord, pushed the final permutations of design for both the torpedo boat and battleship. 70

Aube

"The autonomous torpedo boat, this dangerous yet fragile engine has destroyed the monster battleship, and with it squadron warfare." In 1886, Vice-Admiral

Hyacinthe Laurent Theophile Aube became Minister of the Marine of the French navy.

The tumultuous political arena and the nature of French military appointments would see him ousted from power a little over a year later but his impact on the torpedo boat was significant and long reaching. Aube moved the torpedo boat from the auxiliary role it had previously occupied into the central element of his navy. For the first time a navy rejected the big battleship and even the traditional goal of battle in favour of small craft and the potential of the torpedo. He brought politics into naval thought and was the first to try to use the torpedo boat in nonconventional roles at sea. Aube advanced the Jeune Ecole from a school of thought which utilized the torpedo boat into one which depended upon it.

He tested and further evolved technology, ships and doctrine specific to the torpedo. He was committed to bringing the autonomous torpedo boats onto the oceans of the world, ensuring that they repeatedly navigated a journey thought to be possible only by large warships. He was also the first to perform naval exercises in which torpedo craft were actually pitted against battleships and their potential evaluated and shown to be promising. These exercises demonstrated that the tactic of close blockade was no longer 71

effective and that no matter how much more powerful (the fleet in question had 20 times

the men and money of the defending force) the enemy battle fleet would not be able to

fight through and conquer a defended enemy port using seapower alone.131

As early as 1869 Grivel had posed the question upon which the Jeune Ecole had

been founded upon:

Should not fleet warfare, or the warfare of the big battalions... be reso­ lutely avoided as ruinous for the nation that is less rich in sailors and ships as well as in the means of renewing them? ... It is on account of France's failure to understand such a clear situation that she has suffered all the maritime defeats of her history.... Regardless of the inventions that may appear, in the past or in the future... it is not within the power of any human force to displace suddenly... a well-established naval preponderance... based on the customs, the geographic situation, and the vocation of a people.... Our navy cannot permit itself any illusions regarding an inequality so clearly revealed by geography, history, and statistics.132

Aube posed the answer. Commerce warfare was already a strong foundation of

the Jeune Ecole but he defined its character and removed the role from cruisers, which had differed little from the privateers of the past, awarding the task to the torpedo boat.

Here it transmuted into something far more destructive and in many ways prophetic of the wars to come:

War is the negation of law. It... is the recourse to force-the ruler of the world-of an entire people in the incessant and universal struggle for existence. Everything is therefore not only permissible but legitimate against the enemy. In the days when ... in theory the laws of war were accepted by even the most rebellious spirits . . . how was maritime war

130Ibid.p.l01 131 Ropp, The Development of a Modern Navy : French Naval Policy 1871 -1904.p. 176 132 Ibid.p.20 72

practiced? ... A captured ship was taken to the nearest port if it was worth it, otherwise the captor took aboard its crew and the prize was sunk. Humanity was saved-and also safe were the laws of war. Tomorrow, war breaks out; an autonomous torpedo boat-two officers, a dozen men-meets one of these liners carrying a cargo richer than that of the richest galleons of Spain and a crew and passengers of many hundreds; will the torpedo boat signify to the captain of the liner that it is there, that it is watching him, that it could sink him, and that consequently it makes him prisoner- him, his crew, his passengers-in a word that he has platonically been made a prize and should proceed to the nearest French port? To this declaration ... the captain of the liner would respond with a well-aimed shell that would send to the bottom the torpedo boat, its crew, and its chivalrous captain, and tranquilly he would continue on his momentarily interrupted voyage. Therefore the torpedo boat will follow from afar, invisible, the liner it has met; and, once night has fallen, perfectly silently and tranquilly it will send into the abyss liner, cargo, crew, passengers; and, his soul not only at rest but fully satisfied, the captain of the torpedo boat will continue his cruise.133

Aube formalized the details and practices under which a weaker fleet should oppose a stronger one and how commerce warfare should be carried out. Specifically,

Aube proposed that such commerce warfare was not, as many other thinkers proposed, directed towards destroying or starving the enemy but instead that it was a tool to facilitate the political downfall and capitulation of the opposing government.1 With the proposed disruption to trade, insurance rates would skyrocket and also:

... if cruisers were to interrupt for many months the arrival of American cotton that flows incessantly into her innumerable factories that produce the textiles that are then spread over all the markets of the universe, could one believe that she would not suffer as much as from the interruption of her relations with India? As soon as her factories stop, thousands of

UJIbid.p.l65 134 Till, Seapower: A Guide for the Twenty-First Century.p.60 135Hobson, Imperialism at Sea : Naval Strategic Thought, the Ideology of Sea Power, and the TirpitzPlan, 1875-1914.p.l07 73

workers will be plunged into misery, and a terrible economic crisis will break out. Little by little, even famine will make itself felt with all its horrors, for the grain of America is no less necessary than the products of India for feeding England.

In the two world wars which were to come, Europe would see neither the large decisive battle between fleets nor the close-in blockades of previous eras. Instead, in

World War I, 367 U-boats nearly strangled Britain by sinking 12,185,832 tons of shipping137 and during World War II, over 1,362 German and Italian U-Boats sank

14,573,000 tons of shipping.138 America also utilized this tactic (although in the Pacific, the big fleets would do battle). Submarine commerce raiders were not a German monopoly as during World War II, US forces sunk 5,320,094 tons of Japanese shipping.139

Although Aube successfully predicted such events, much of his importance lies in arguments he sparked and the reactions he brought about. For while Aube may have been an intellectual convert of the torpedo boat he had never actually been involved with weapon or boat previously. ° The reactions of those who did possess such knowledge demonstrated that while Aube's ideas may have been prophetic they overreached what was possible at the time. The Committee originating from within France's torpedo school found his proposal of autonomous boats able to stay afloat and reach their destination

Ropp, The Development of a Modern Navy : French Naval Policy 1871-1904.p.\64 137 E. B. Potter, Roger Fredland, and Henry Hitch Adams, Sea Power: A Naval History, 2nd ed. (Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1981). p.230 138 Ibid, p.269 139 Ibid. 140 Ropp, The Development of a Modern Navy : French Naval Policy 1871-1904.p!39 74

still largely unrealistic for combat at that time since the conditions of the day left the crew exhausted and the ships in need of repair and refurbishment.141 Experienced torpedo officers also pointed out that a torpedo boat was easy to see and destroy by even a lightly armed merchant. Torpedoes could be avoided easily, especially if their launch was detected (then a reasonable occurrence) and if the ship were already making constant manoeuvres (zigzagging back and forth).142

Aube had no monopoly on far sighted vision and, indeed, it was largely as a result of someone with even greater foresight that saw France eventually turn away from such tactics and even build battleships once more. Admiral Bourgeois, a world respected authority on torpedo boats, pointed out that:

... [with] the advent of the torpedo, whatever the impact on naval equipment, nothing has changed with international treaties, the right people or the moral laws that govern the world. It did not give the belligerents the right to life and death over citizens of the State harmless i 143 enemy or neutral states.

Even if successful, such a strategy would inevitably result in the sinking of neutral vessels and "such piracy would only be the signal for a general league of neutrals against us."144

141 Marder, The Anatomy of British Sea Power: A History of British Naval Policy in the Pre- Dreadnought Era, 1880-1905. p. 168 142 Ropp, The Development of a Modern Navy : French Naval Policy 1871-1904.p. 169 143 Simeon Bourgeois, Les Torpilleurs La Guerre Navale (Paris: Librairie de la Nouvelle Revue, 1888).11-15 (translation provided by Google) 144 Marder, The Anatomy of British Sea Power: A History of British Naval Policy in the Pre- Dreadnought Era, 1880-1905. p. 187 75

Aube's proposals were countered but the debate raged on and the exploration and

creation of torpedo theory continued well after his retirement. Aube politicized this

debate both within the French papers and abroad. He highlighted issues that addressed not only construction of torpedo craft over the large warship but the torpedo boat's

intended use as a weapon of commerce.145 In 1891, future British First Sea Lord Jackie

Fisher wrote that:

In the event of war with France it would be absolutely necessary at any cost either to destroy the torpedo-boats and, if possible, Stations of Boulogne, Calais, and Dunkirk, or so to watch them as to paralysis the torpedo-boats. So long as torpedo-boats from these stations have are in range they would practically deny all passage of the Straits of Dover night to merchant ships, and except in very clear weather, even to man of- 146

war.

This recognition of the virulent power of the torpedo boat in commerce not only

served to popularize the navy in general and the torpedo boat in particular but it also

served to create public acceptance of the value of the new design. The concern created

internationally over the threat of French commerce raiders contributed to raised

awareness, expanded naval construction and further investigations into the torpedo boat

and its potential.147 Aube departed from previous thinkers of the Jeune Ecole in his opinion of the torpedo boat and his belief that this unconventional weapon should form the primary thrust rather than be merely a supplementary means of gaining an advantage

145 Sondhaus, Naval Warfare, 1815-1914.pA39 146 Marder, The Anatomy of British Sea Power: A History of British Naval Policy in the Pre- Dreadnought Era, 1880-J905.pA65 l47Ibid.p.l68 76

in the naval battlefield. His results were limited but his legacy both in raising the debate and exploring the potential of the torpedo boat were extensive.

Commerce warfare proved an effective way of defeating an enemy; unfortunately, it also, as predicted, proved an even better way of making more enemies. A navy might choose this strategy because of its inability to successfully match the opposing navy.

However, rather than being only the recourse of the weaker of two powers, it was often the choice of the one with power. To fight and crush all enemy trade means that one must be able to not only match one's military force against an opponent's merchant marine but at the same time also retain enough power to balance the opposing military fleets, while leaving some reserve to be able to do the same to any other nation that might take the offensive. Aube believed such a strategy should be taken by a navy whose naval fleet was weaker than the other and he failed to fully appreciate the likely costs or results such acts would bring. Still, he recognized that the torpedo boat had made coastal centers almost impregnable. This recognition was later shown to be correct during World War I when

England's grand fleet was able to rule the waves and keep Germany bottled up in Kiel but at no point did it ever attack Kiel, as the cost would have been horrendous.

As Julian Corbett would write several years later "our most dearly cherished strategical traditions were shaken to the bottom. The "proper place" for our battle fleet

Ernie Dusgate Selby Bradford, The Great Ship (London: H. Hamilton, 1986). 126 77

has always been "on the enemy's coasts," and now that was precisely where the enemy would be best pleased to see it."149

The torpedo proved to be the missing link in the chain of coastal defence. Forts could provide concentrated firepower in protected strongholds but only at a fixed position and set to whatever distance it could reach. Mines were equally passive, fixed to a point and only a threat if the enemy came within range. They could also only give partial coverage as a nation's own vessels had to be able to pass safely. However, one of the striking aspects of the torpedo boat was that it could leave the safety of land and actively pursue the enemy and reach anywhere within the coastal zone. It could cover the cracks and close with an enemy. It was also harder to target when at rest since its location could vary and it could be replaced or augmented at ease.

Corbett, Some Principles of Maritime Strategy.p.122 78

Mahan

Alfred Thayer Mahan wrote in 1889 what many considered to be the navy's bible,

The Influence of Sea Power Upon History. One cannot discuss naval thought during the nineteenth century without mentioning Mahan or the book in question. He was the era's prophet promising epic decisive battles and the riches of the world to the victor.

However, epic sea battles were hard to come by, mostly due to fear of the torpedo boat.

During the interval between the two battles [Tsushima and Jutland] the Whitehead torpedo had, year by year, gained in efficiency. It had extended its 500 yard range of action in 1905 to 10,000 yards and even more in 1916 and its explosive effect had been increased four-fold. This insidious and somewhat sneaking weapon had, in the intervening years altered the whole of naval tactics, for its deadly menace had forced the effective fighting range of ships up from the 3,000 yards or so at Tsushima to some fourteen, sixteen, or even eighteen thousand yards at Jutland... this brought about the development of long-range gunnery . 15°

However, to say he was unkind towards the torpedo boat would be an understatement.151

Mahan was a captain of the U.S. navy and he shared his service's views of the torpedo.

Even as late as 1896 the U.S. Navy possessed only 200 Whiteheads (compared to the

4,000 possessed by England) and a bare handful of vessels equipped to fire them152. The service still seemed to echo its admiralty's opinion of pre-Whitehead torpedoes that:

Torpedoes are not so agreeable when used on both sides; therefore I have reluctantly brought myself to it.... I have always deemed it unworthy of a

Gray, The Devil's Device : The Story of Robert Whitehead, Inventor of the Torpedo.p.182 1 Already discussed in introduction... 2 Gray, The Devil's Device : The Story of Robert Whitehead, Inventor of the Torpedo.p. 134 79

chivalrous nation, but it does not do to give your enemy such a decided superiority over you1

For the US, an emerging global superpower, the small, unassuming and still (at that time) primarily coastal torpedo boat must have been a great affront to this nation who wished to enter the world stage with great fanfare and all possible pomp and ceremony.

Mahan' s great contribution to naval thought and one of the primary reasons why the torpedo boat has all too often been neglected within naval literature even while remaining intrinsic to naval practice was his commitment to power emanating from size.154 Mahan demonstrated how international power and wealth resulted from (at least in the case of the British Empire) control over the sea lanes and its resulting commerce. While torpedo boats may have been excellent arbiters of destruction they were not so potent at projecting national status and naval might abroad. Many, like Robert O'Connell, have

"stood in awe under the great guns, wondering what it must have been like to hear them fire..." but few would have stood in similar mood above (or perhaps slightly to the side of) a torpedo boat's armament and imagined the far less glamorous moments described by their sailors:

As a rule, we lived on ham, sardines, and tinned soups; for most of the time the weather was so rough that it was as much as we could do to get a little water boiled. We had a table about 18 inches wide, but there was no point in laying it, for nothing would stay on it. The usual plan was for one

Frank M. Bennett, The Steam Navy of the United States a History of the Growth of the Steam Vessel of War in the U.S. Navy, and of the Naval Engineer Corps (Pittsburgh, Pa.: Warren,, 1896), microform :.p.425 154 Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1805. pg.39 80

man to hold the sardine tin while the other picked out sardines by their tails and transferred them to his mouth.

The commander of No. 61 reported:

Particularly fatiguing on a torpedo boat, and especially hard for men of nervous disposition, is the continual vibration that constantly shakes you, and with it the throbbing of the engines that produced a kind of counterstroke that made the whole stern tremble and seemed likely to cause the engine itself to become dislocated. . In sum, one can sail and live at sea on a torpedo boat, if one does not exaggerate the number of days to be spent in the open ocean...I55

Mahan was an American captain writing about how England had become a global

superpower and while his writing was greatly successful within both nations, it was equally valued worldwide and translated and widely distributed in Russian, French,

Italian, Spanish, German and Japanese156.

In Germany Kaiser Wilhelm wanted to memorize it in full157 while Tirpitz had the

German Naval magazine serialize it for the public and he had it placed on every warship

1 SR in the fleet, distributing an additional 8,000 free copies through the naval office.

It was not only Mahan's writing that was so esteemed; Makarov's book

Discussion of Questions in Naval Tactics was translated and distributed by the U.S.

Office of Naval Intelligence the same year it was published. Admirals were questioned

Ropp, The Development of a Modern Navy : French Naval Policy 1871-1904.pA76 156 Marder, The Anatomy of British Sea Power: A History of British Naval Policy in the Pre- Dreadnought Era, 1880-1905.pA6 '"Herwig, "Luxury" Fleet: The Imperial German Navy, 1888-1918.^.11 158 Ibid.p.40 81

and quoted on any noteworthy event by other officers and publications, both domestic

and foreign. Colomb and Aube also had their thoughts widely distributed.

One of the more interesting facets of naval studies during this period was the

continuing level of globalization. No navy operated in isolation - strategic thought and

development flowed back and forth with remarkable ease. Everyone knew of the Jeune

Ecole; everyone knew the intimate details of any combat that occurred dating from the

battle of Lissa to that of Tushima; and, the personnel of opposing nations (including

sometimes even opposing commanders) would sit together to debate and discuss matters

of interest.

After a conflict ended, it was not exceptional for men of opposing countries to

meet and discuss the military operations. The head of the British navy was sufficiently

well acquainted with Japan's commanding admiral to consider him "a great friend of

mine."159

The Turkish commander Hobart Pasha was also only too happy to relate to the

papers of the time the following conversation regarding the use of torpedo boats with his

opposing commander Makarov:

Since the war, a Russian naval officer, whose name was Captain Makaroff, A.D.O. to H.M. the Emperor of Russia, told me that he had under his command seven torpedo-boats, with which he volunteered to go out—in the daytime it must be remembered— and attack me. We discussed at some length the probable result ...160

159 Fisher, Records.p.206 160 Hobart, The Torpedo Scare. Experiences During the Turco-Russian War... Reprinted from \201cblackwood's Magazine>20ld with Additional Matte\0301r. P.743 82

Even naval construction was a process much dependent on the choices made abroad; as the British First Lord of the Admiralty, the Earl of Northbrook, put it in 1884:

It would be an extravagance to spend £2,000,000 on the construction of large ironclad ships. The great difficulty which the Admiralty would have to contend with if they were granted £3,000,000 or £4,000,000 tomorrow for the purpose referred to would be to decide how they should spend the money. The difficulty of the present time was whether it was desirable to increase the number of these enormous ships of war; and that it was a difficulty felt not only by our Admiralty but, as he knew, by those who had to conduct the affairs of other countries.1 '

Navies were built for the future and the ships that would be built only after five or more years of effort would exist alongside foreign navies whose ships had also been planned using similar logic. Nathaniel Barnaby, a leading naval constructor explained the guesswork required for any fleet in 1876:

... the introduction of the screw propeller into the Navy in 1844 made a magnificent Navy obsolete: The realization of the terrible effect of shell fire in 1854 again rendered our grand screw line-of-battle ships and things of the past...We are bound to take care not... to neglect the signs and warnings that are given us. It is my duty... to detect at once the appearance of a new peril for the ships, or a new source of power for them.1 2

Predicting the future was tenuous at best but in the uncertainty of the industrial revolution it had proven far worse and Tirpitz went as far as to call the navy of the 1880s

161 Ropp, The Development of a Modern Navy : French Naval Policy 1871-1904.pA39 162 Ibid, p.27 83

nothing so much as a 'Museum of Experiments.' To all this guesswork Mahan offered the solution in stating that there were fundamental elements of seapower that would not change:

... on the sea, the advance from the galley timidly creeping from port to port to the sailing-ship launching out boldly to the ends of the earth, and from the latter to the steamship of our own time, has increased the scope and the rapidity of naval operations without necessarily changing the principles which should direct them; and the speech of Hermocrates twenty-three hundred years ago, before quoted, contained a correct strategic plan, which is as applicable in its principles now as it was then.164

It seems that for Mahan, the small boat, even when armed with the Whitehead torpedo, was not a threat because it had never been a threat before. Mahan's views were widely adopted by the navies of the world who committed to 188 new large battleships between 1890 and 1905.165 However, in light of the threat these battleships represented,

1,263 small torpedo boats were also created to keep the nations' coasts clear of these new enemy fleets. Most significantly, in light of the threat of these small coastal ships navies worldwide also adopted 442 ocean-going torpedo vessels in order to both assist the fleet in attack and defend from enemy torpedo boats.166

Also, in an ironic twist of fate the torpedo boat was to prove far more suited to the battles Mahan envisioned than the large boats themselves. Battleships have enormous

Technology and naval combat in the twentieth century and beyond By Phillips Payson O'Brien p. 59 164 Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1805.p.& 165 George, History of Warships : From Ancient Times to the Twenty-First Century.p.78 166 Figures represent only the eight largest naval powers of the time and in some cases extend slightly before 1890 but adequately represent available naval force between 1890 and 1905. (Ibid.p.78) 84

capability and can perform a host of tasks unsuitable or downright impossible for a torpedo boat; but, if all that is desired is the potential to destroy another surface vessel than the torpedo boat reigns supreme. Thirty-five battleships were lost during World War

I and the torpedo brought them to their end more often than any other cause: only five were sunk by gunfire while fourteen were sunk by torpedo In World War II the same was to follow as 35 more battleships were destroyed. Gunfire accounted for a bare six of those vessels and in four cases that gunfire was also accompanied by torpedo attack. A full 20 of those vessels were destroyed by small craft either on, under, or above the

169 seas.

Even proponents of the battleship recognized the threat of the torpedo boat.

Things remained very much as a retired officer of both the British and put it as early as 1880: That such a dread of them should and always will be met with in future Naval wars, at times creating a regular torpedo scare or funk, is not extraordinary, when it is remembered that these submarine weapons of the present day, are capable of sinking the finest ironclad afloat, and of launching into eternity without a moment's warning or preparation, whole ships' crews.170

167 This figure includes pre- as well as dreadnoughts and battle cruisers. 168 This time all dreadnought era. 169 The relationship between plane submarine and torpedo will be discussed shortly but as the impetus for destruction on the cheap is the very essence of the torpedo boat they have also been included here. 170 Charles William Sleeman, Torpedoes and Torpedo Warfare, Containing a Complete... Account of the Rise and Progress of Submarine Warfare... With... Illustrations, Etc (pp. viii. 309. Griffin & Co.: Portsmouth, 1880). 85

Tirpitz

Alfred von Tirpitz was the formative player behind the evolution of the torpedo boat within Germany. It could be argued that no other naval officer, in any navy, had a

closer or more influential relationship with their nation's development of torpedo boats than did Tirpitz. He is often quoted in writing stating that "my rise [was] bound up with the development of the torpedo arm".171 He was a leading member of Germany's

'torpedo gang' (the group of officers championing and developing torpedo technology within the German navy) from the very beginning of the group's formation. He was the

one to arrange the very first demonstrations of the Whitehead torpedo to Albrecht von

Stosch, the Chief of the German navy at the time, in 1877 and when the weapon was

purchased a year later, he was given the task developing the tactics for the small ships he had recommended be purchased. In 1884 he became Head of the Torpedo Department

and in 1889 he wrote the definitive book on torpedo boat operations.172 In 1890 he became Chief of Dockyards, two years later he was Chief of Staff of the High Command

and by 1897 he was Secretary of State at the Reich Navy Office and, effectively, second

in power over the navy deferring only to the emperor. He would hold that position for the

171 Gray, The Devil's Device : The Story of Robert Whitehead, Inventor of the Torpedo.p.93 172 Hobson, Imperialism at Sea : Naval Strategic Thought, the Ideology of Sea Power, and the Tirpitz Plan, I875-19I4.pA5l 86

next 19 years and his ideas and beliefs would shape the state in which the German navy

entered World War I.

Tirpitz believed that the torpedo boat was an exceptional weapons platform and

should be a significant part of Germany's fleet. He was well versed in the ideas of Aube

and the Jeune Ecole and he believed that the torpedo had altered much of the fundamental

aspects of naval combat. However, he remained completely uninterested in Aube's belief

in commerce warfare because as he put it:

it is characteristic of battle on the open sea that its sole goal is the annihilation of the enemy. Land battle offers other tactical possibilities, such as taking terrain, which do not exist in war at sea. Only annihilation can be accounted a success at sea.173

He was thus a devout follower of Mahan and agreed wholeheartedly with

Mahan's view that "...the fundamental principle of all naval war, namely, that defence

is insured only by offence, and that the one decisive objective of the offensive is the

enemy's organized force, his battle-fleet".174

However while Tirpitz saw a powerful role for torpedo boats and coastal defence

torpedo craft, in particular, he did not believe that such defensive vessels could achieve

victory by themselves.

Those who consistently advocate the defensive often base their argument of the premise that the offensive enemy will present himself

Michael Epkenhans, Tirpitz : Architect of the German High Seas Fleet, 1st ed. (Washington, D.C.: Potomac Books, 2008).p.20 4 Hobson, Imperialism at Sea : Naval Strategic Thought, the Ideology of Sea Power, and the Tirpitz Plan, 1875-1914.p.206 87

to do decisive battle wherever that might suit us. This is however only the case to a very limited extent.175

Many have tried to pose the torpedo boat as being in competition or conflict with the large battleship. It is unfortunate that both designs are all too often portrayed as being the result of mutually exclusive philosophies. When Tirpitz, self-acknowledged member of the 'torpedo gang', undertook the building of a massive fleet of battleships for

Germany, it is often misconstrued as a rejection of the torpedo boat in favour of the huge, expensive dreadnought battleship.176 What this perspective ignores is that the two types of vessels held very different roles within the navy. Tirpitz sought the power a battle fleet of large warships would provide and project. This does not mean that he rejected the torpedo boat. During his 19 years in power, he built 249 large torpedo boats, and

Germany's unrestricted submarine campaign is certainly indicative of a solid foundation of faith in the weapon and its ability (although to attribute this decision solely to Tirpitz himself would be incorrect).177

The energetic employment of torpedo boats is, in my view, only possible if these vessels can rely on the support of strong forces, or, best of all, of the whole fleet. Otherwise they must soon come up with mixed forces of superior strength, and thus achieve nothing. On the other hand, I hold that, if we can succeed in bringing our torpedo-boat flotilla either by day or night to bear against important parts of the British fleet we can achieve great successes. A guarantee of this to be found in 17R their thorough efficiency, based on decades of training.

Ibid.p.206

Gray, The Devil's Device : The Story of Robert Whitehead, Inventor of the Torpedo, p.93 Epkenhans, Tirpitz : Architect of the German High Seas Fleet.p.64 Alfred von Tirpitz, My Memoirs, 2 vols. (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1919). 102 88

The central facet of the torpedo boat is that its value is wholly dependent on the

existence of large warships. It is revolutionary within the naval arena because it can

destroy larger and more powerfully armed and exceedingly more expensive warships.

Some authors have come to the conclusion that because of the small torpedo boat's

success in felling the battleship that the battleship was a failed design. However, if all the

ships would have been as small as torpedo boats, the torpedo boat would have been

useless. It had great difficulty hitting anything small, fast and manoeuvrable with its

torpedoes (which were also hugely overpowered for such a role) except by slim chance.

In addition, many coastal torpedo craft had a very shallow draught and torpedoes would

likely have passed safely underneath their hulls. Had battleships not been built, then

victory at sea would have gone to the best armoured and armed of the small craft and the

arms race leader would have likely come to resemble a battleship design sooner or later.

The torpedo boat has never been 'a battleship on the cheap'. The battleship has a

plethora of roles and capabilities that lend themselves to a multitude of diplomatic,

ceremonial and military engagements. The torpedo boat has only one function: to deliver

its torpedoes into an enemy vessel. It cannot host formal events, launch aircraft, transport

large amounts of cargo, act as an artillery platform, serve as a ship of state or even power

a city for several months.179 There is no reason why the torpedo boat should have been

In 1929, the city of Tacoma suffered a major draught and, as a result, lost power when the hydroelectric dams ceased to function. President Hoover responded to this crisis by ordering the carrier 89

considered as supplanting or attempting to supplant the battleship. It is interesting to note that here the Mahanian misconception which saw the big ship embraced is now being used to suggest why it should have been rejected. The idea of the epic decisive naval battle is a compelling one, but as many naval historians, from Corbett to Makarov, have said: that is not the sole purpose of a navy. If a huge flotilla cleared out an entire enemy force from an opposing harbour they would still be meaningless so long as they remained impotent on land. Torpedo boats matter very little to a person on land and so the power projection of an artillery platform (armoured so as to be able to assist even in the face of resistance) is needed after all. The battleship's raison d'etre had been enunciated in

Mahan's book which had became the standard justification for a powerful naval presence.

If a nation dominated the seas it followed that it would control trade and become both wealthy and powerful. A navy did this by controlling the sea lanes, and according to

Mahan, at least, by destroying the navies of any competitors in epic high seas combat.

However, as Tirpitz was quick to point out (and follow through when war arrived), 'Why bother?' Few nations were actually equal in naval power and there was no incentive for a weaker power to 'sally forth' into a pitched battle that it knew it would lose. Trafalgar's arena would only be likely to occur by accident or mistake, either if fleets should stumble into each other, as happened at the actual Trafalgar, or if one

USS Lexington (a former battleship converted into a carrier) to offer aid. For about one month, the USS Lexington acted in its newly expanded role as a sea base by offering logistical support and using her 210,000 horsepower turbines to provide roughly one third of the city's power. (John Gordon, Leveraging 90

commander made a mistake in evaluating the enemy force or during the actual battle.

However, one small vessel, the torpedo boat, made this notion even less likely for it

offered decisive action when stakes were high. As for the actual stakes, the torpedo boats

risked the minimum of men, wealth and resources against a battleship, which was the

single largest and most expensive construction project a nation could engage in at the

time. The battleship also required many years of building time and a crew of hundreds or

even thousands. For Tirpitz, the torpedo offered the potential to counter balance the

superior British navy by increasing his fleet's destructive power while risking far less

than his opponent. However, as was endemic with many such equalizing strategies

involving the torpedo boat, Tirpitz failed to consider that the British might have had

similar thoughts and that they would out-build him in both battleships and torpedo boats.

Fisher

John (also known as 'Jackie') Fisher was another officer who had spent much of

his career alongside the torpedo. However, he was never to play as central a role in its

embryonic development as Tirpitz, in part because Tirpitz had been a member of a 'new'

German Navy rather than part of a huge entrenched service such as the British Royal

America's Capabilities : Exploring New Combat and Noncombat Roles and Missions for the U.S. Carrier Fleet (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, National Defense Research Institute, 2006).p.28) 91

Navy. The British Royal Navy was far less enthusiastic about the device than other navies were. They did adopt and develop torpedo technology but only as an additional weapon system for their battleships rather than leveraging the new potential offered by the torpedo boat. Although Fisher pursued his interest in torpedo technology, he was to have less impact among the many other British torpedo experts. As he wrote much later in his memoirs:

A First Sea Lord told me on one occasion that there were no torpedoes when he came to sea; and he didn't see why the devil there should be any of the beastly things now ! .. This was apropos of my attracting the attention of his serene and contented mind to the fact that we hadn't got any torpedoes at that time in the British Navy, and that a certain Mr. Whitehead (with whom I was acquainted) had devised an automobile torpedo, costing only £500, that would make a hole as big as his Lordship's carriage (then standing at the door) in the bottom of the strongest and biggest ship in the world, and she would go to the bottom in 1 80

about five minutes.

Fisher's torpedo boat contributions began in earnest once he became Captain of the Royal Navy's gunnery school HMS Excellent in 1883 and set about developing a separate curriculum for a torpedo branch out a belief that it should have its own separate school and training. As he put it: If you are a gunnery man, you must believe and teach that the world must be saved by gunnery and will only be saved by gunnery. If you are a torpedo man, you must lecture and teach the same thing about torpedoes. But be in earnest, terribly in earnest. The man who doubts, or who is half­ hearted never does anything for himself or his country. You are missionaries; show the earnestness-if need be, the fanaticism-of missionaries.181

Fisher, Records.p. 119 1 Gray, The Devil's Device : The Story of Robert Whitehead, Inventor of the Torpedo.p. 103 By the time he left that position, the torpedo branch had split firmly in nature

from that of the gunnery school and:

It is with the deepest regret that I terminate my connection with the torpedo school. I have done my utmost to develop it, from a conviction that the issue of the next naval war will chiefly depend upon the use that is made of the torpedo, not only in ocean war, but for the purposes of blockade...

From there, he became the Director of Naval Ordinance in 1886 and Admiral

Superintendent of Portsmouth Dockyard in 1891. However, it was as the Controller and

Third Sea Lord in 1892 that his impact on the torpedo boat was again to be felt as he was

personally involved with and responsible for the creation and christening of a new vessel

meant to accompany a fleet and defend it from other torpedo craft even while retaining

the weapon, itself:

Fisher asked Yarrow what they should be called. 'That's your job,' replied Yarrow. 'Well,' said Fisher, 'we'll call them Destroyers as they're meant to destroy the French boats', and their original name of 'Torpedo- Boat Destroyer'-TBD-was in due course abbreviated to 'Destroyer' and has so remained.

Herbert Richmond was an officer who was for a time closely associated with

many of Fisher's reforms and he would later write that;

The destroyer is the outcome of the torpedo-boat. When the torpedo was invented it was at once realised that it possessed capacities for attack on a battle fleet, and a flotilla of torpedo vessels became an arm of the battle fleet. The torpedo vessel developed along two lines. According to one

Although this comes from a 2 hand related anecdote...Smith, Hard Lying : The Birth of the Destroyer, 1893-1913. p.21 93

school of thought, predominantly the German, she should be a pure torpedo carrier whose object was to attack the opposing battleships. This may be called the active or offensive school. In the British navy, the tactical theory was that the battle would be decided by the artillery, and that the object should be to ensure that the artillery should not be prevented from developing its full intensity; and the flotilla craft was developed as a gun-boat whose primary purpose was to prevent the torpedo craft of an enemy from delivering an attack which might oblige the fleet to suspend or diminish its volume of fire through having to alter its course in order to avoid an attack or evade the torpedoes. Hence, while one navy added constantly in size and number to its fleet-torpedo-boat flotilla, the other in reply added equally constantly in size and number to its fleet-torpedo-boat-destroyer flotilla. In the climax at Jutland there were approximately an equal number of torpedo-boats and destroyers in each fleet. The German hope that an initial inferiority in battleship force would be compensated for by a flotilla was not fully attained for the reason that the counter was evolved in the form of the opposing flotilla. The numbers, thus, were not the outcome of some specific tactical doctrine of the proportion between the numbers of flotilla craft and of ships of the line, but of attempts to gain superiority by building larger numbers. It was the perfectly rational outcome of the policy of competition. The aim, and the unavoidable aim, things being as they were, was to attain superiority by outbuilding the rival.1 3

Fisher continued to make progress but the extent of his revolutionary new ideas were not really put in place until he became First Sea Lord in 1904. It was while in this position that Fisher ended the era of torpedo experimentation almost singlehandedly.

Tirpitz had tried to use the torpedo boat to enhance his navy's power but Fisher made the vessel and, indeed, technology in general subordinate to the nation's intent. He recognized that the torpedo made battleships vulnerable and he searched for a way to use the same technology to counter that weakness. It wasn't that he was using torpedo boats

Herbert W. Richmond, The Naval Role in Modern Warfare, Oxford Pamphlets on World Affairs (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1940). p.241 94

to counterbalance an enemy fleet of battleships which might also include torpedo boats but rather that he was designing a new type of vessel for the explicit purpose of destroying torpedo boats. When Whitehead created his torpedo device he went out to show the navies of the world what it could do whereas Fisher went out and told the inventors what he wanted them to design.

Aube' s school of thought was that a nation should "bring to bear immediately all of our genius for invention and all of our budgetary resources on the side whose future is certain and inevitable. The sea is ours, at least for several years, if only we take the lead."184

Tirpitz reasoning on technical matters had been summed up in his comment that

"no new weapon be adopted until it has a definite tactical place."185

The torpedo had meandered during the nineteenth century while it passed through different navies, contemplated about by different naval thinkers. Sometimes it was championed and sometimes abandoned as worthless while different nations experimented and tinkered in order to see what it was capable of. Fisher and Tirpitz both knew what the torpedo boat could do, but only Fisher followed through the vision to realize the full potential of this newest weapon in the naval military arena. As Fisher stated:

Strategy should govern the types of ships to be designed. Ship design, as dictated by strategy, should govern tactics.

184 Actually attributable to Charmes but as Theodore Ropp wrote; they shared a "unity of views inseparable that it is impossible to distinguish between the ideas of the two men "(Ropp, The Development of a Modern Navy : French Naval Policy 1871-1904.p,l59 l85Ibid.p.l66 95

Tactics should govern details of armaments.

In approaching the important question of ship design the first essential is to divest our minds totally of the idea that a single type of ship as now built is necessary, or even advisable, then to consider the strategic use of each different class, especially weighing the antagonistic attributes of nominally similar classes in the old wars.

To commence with the battleship. The sole reason for the existence of the old line of battleship was that that ship was the only vessel that could not be destroyed except by a vessel of equal class. This meant that a country possessing the largest number of best equipped battleships could lay them alongside the enemy, or off the ports where the enemy were. Transports with the escort of a few battleships could then proceed to make oversea conquests. Squadrons of battleships or cruisers escorting the convoy of merchant ships and keeping the line of communications open. In each case the battleship, being able to protect everything it had under its wing from any smaller vessel, was the ultimate naval strength of the country. Then it was that, by means of the battleship only, was the command of the sea gained and held. Let us be quite clear on the matter, it was solely from the fact that the battleship was unassailable by any vessel except a battleship that made the command of the sea by battleships a possibility]

Hence battleships came to symbolise naval strength and supremacy. For this reason battleships have been built through every change of construction and material, although by degrees other vessels not battleships have arisen which can attack and destroy them. Here therefore there is good ground for inquiry whether the naval supremacy of a country can any longer be assessed by its battleships. To build battleships merely to fight enemy's battleships, so long as cheaper craft can destroy them, and prevent them of themselves protecting sea operations, is merely to breed Kilkenny cats unable to catch rats or mice. For fighting purposes they would be excellent, but for gaining practical results they would be useless. This at once forces a consideration as to how a battleship differs from an armoured cruiser. Fundamentally the battleship sacrifices speed for a superior armament and' protective armour. It is this superiority of speed that enables an enemy's ships to be overhauled or evaded that constitutes the real difference between the two. At the present moment naval experience is not sufficiently ripe to abolish totally the building of battleships so long as other countries do not do so. But it is evidently an 96

absolute necessity in future construction to make the 'speed of the battleship approach as nearly as possible that of the armoured cruiser.

As First Sea Lord, he set about recreating a fleet of ships to suit his nation's needs. He refined the destroyer but his most significant revolutions touched upon how navies were structured and two other types of warships, one of which had been the torpedo boat's chief opponent until that time, the battleship, and the other which would become one of the torpedo boat's (in the form of the destroyer) greatest foes in the future, the submarine.

The changes he made to the submarine were significant but never widely adopted by the navy and in an ironic twist of fate they were to be of more significance to Tirpitz, who had shown little enthusiasm for the vessel, and the German U-boats of World War I, than for Fisher and the British navy, itself. His dreadnought revolution was far better received and that it arose from an attempt to counter the threat of the torpedo makes it noteworthy. Fisher had noticed the long ranging to which vessels in both the Russo-

Japanese and Sino-Japanese wars had engaged and combined with his own reasoning reached the conclusion the battleship's only hope for survival lay in speed and guns engaging at long ranges since "The design of fighting ships must follow the mode of fighting instead of fighting being subsidiary to and dependent on the design of ship." This

Fisher, Records.^. 145 97

directed nature of design was something he would be credited for (and credit himself for) bringing into naval development as a departure of what had come before:

Again, it is recognised by all but a few misguided misanthropes that the new shipbuilding policy is a magnificent departure in fighting policy. We ask the officers who are going to fight, what they want, and we build, thereto. Formerly vessels were simply belated improvements on their predecessors. Admirals had to make the best use they could of the heterogeneous assemblage of vessels which the idiosyncrasies of talented designers and Controllers of the Navy had saddled us with, to the embarrassment of those whose business it was to use them in battle, and to the bitter bewilderment of types in the brain of the Board of Admiralty! Theory was entirely divorced from practice, with the lamentable result that when the two were recently brought together, and the "Dreadnought" was evolved, it was found that the whole Navy had practically become obsolete!187

It was as a result of this analysis that he believed that:

If we have the advantage of speed, which is the first desideratum in every class of fighting vessel (Battleships included), then, and only then, we can choose our distance for fighting. If we can choose our distance for 1 RR

fighting, then we can choose our armament for fighting!

Fisher had already been aware of the power of the torpedo boat and had already warned his officers in 1902: "Don't get inside 3000 yards of the enemy ... because, as sure as you do so, the Torpedo will get in!" Later in 1904 he would again reiterate that: Another reason [other than high speed] which leads to long ranges is the dread of the torpedo, which limits the closeness of approach to 3000 yards. But in large ships with good-sized turning circles, to ensure not approaching within 3000 yards, the manoeuvring distance will be at least,

Ibid.p.152 Ibid.p.153 98

5,000 yards, otherwise in an inappreciable time the two squadrons get within torpedo range.

The dreadnought was to solve these problems however in this it was largely a failure. Fisher demanded cutting edge speed but although the dreadnought was completed in a record breaking year and a day most vessels took at least three to five times as long whereas torpedo boats could be completed in mere weeks. This meant that a newly built torpedo boat would inevitably have the advantage of at least several years of development to gain the speed advantage Fisher had worked so hard to negate. This also meant that his dreadnought battleships had a very short 'shelf life' in relation to previous warships and the concentration of resources they represented. At the cost of 1.7 million pounds the HMS Dreadnought had been completed in 1906 but a mere 8 years later had been viewed as too old and slow to keep up with the British Grand Fleet.190 Also, as submarines did catch on (albeit it with the opposing force) and the opposing fleet stayed safely at anchor in ports protected with too many defences to attack, the large ships were left with nothing to do and with even the open seas sporting a dangerous and invisible enemy they had to remain protected within their own ports as well. Fisher had created these vessels to speed away from some dangers and towards others. However the dangers he wished them to strike out at never materialized and the ones they were to avoid took to the sky and under the waves rendering speed largely irrelevant. Finally, in making

Marder, The Anatomy of British Sea Power: A History of British Naval Policy in the Pre- Dreadnought Era, 1880-1905. p. 524 99

'running away' the chosen defence to torpedo craft he guaranteed that such battles as did occur, like Jutland, be inconclusive since against the threat of torpedo attack the British fleet had no defence but to move away.

Still the design innovations he created did give the battleship several more decades and as the torpedo boat's usual enemy (and now also as its chief escort) it also gave the torpedo boat and destroyer steady work and established roles. As Richmond described their evolution and subsequent development the two, giant and microbe, remained very much interrelated:

... although the view that the torpedo flotilla would cause the disappearance of the ironclad proved incorrect, later years have substantiated the forecast that a "new and costly change" would take place in naval warfare. This 80-ton torpedo-boat might cost something like £1 5,000. To deal with her the "destroyer", a larger and a more expensive vessel of about 220 tons, was introduced. This 220-ton vessel, costing some £30,000, has since grown into one of 1500-1800 tons, and even larger, costing some ten times as much as the original craft. And, when the invention of the submarine brought into being a formidable and costly type of torpedo-boat, this in turn-as the War was to prove-made it necessary vastly to increase the number of the flotilla. Since the War, the torpedo-boat has taken wings. Whether experience will be repeated and a winged destroyer will be evolved remains to be seen, but one of the combined effects of the flotilla of surface, submarine and flying torpedo- boats is to cause an insistence upon the need for great size in the capital ships in order to sustain the injuries which the torpedo and the bomb can inflict.191

William E. McMahon, Dreadnought Battleships and Battle Cruisers ([Washington, D.C.] University Press of America, 1978.).pl 1-12 191 Richmond, The Naval Role in Modern Warfare, p.81 100

Fisher championed new forms of torpedo boats and a rationalization of the ones which existed. He did not abandon the big battleship but he did recognize the potential that one day his navy might have to, as there was nothing intrinsically valuable about a ship type which no longer furthered the goals of its nation. In directing technology towards his national and naval aims, Fisher ended the era of trial and error that had preceded him. Not all his vessels would be successes but the torpedo boat, and indeed all the ship types, no longer permutated or changed in the way in which they had before.

Only the aircraft carrier was still to evolve as a class of ship and Fisher even played a role in its development (albeit a far less intentional one). His championing of the submarine also ended an important period of development for the torpedo boat as it was no longer the only type of vessel to occupy the role of the 'giant slaying microbe'. The torpedo boat continued and developed in many ways but beside aircraft and submarines, it no longer seemed best suited as the slayer of battleships. Coasts would remain unapproachable due to its defence and the destroyer would expand the torpedo craft's repertoire to include not just torpedo boats but also submarines and aircraft. The torpedo boat was now an established class of vessel, well known and codified within the world with a proven value that was no longer contended.

Three of his more eccentric designs were converted into forerunners of the modern carrier. Less than a month after his retirement as First Sea Lord, the conversion of the first carrier began as the naval staff had frantically searched for any means of making use of the otherwise almost unworkable design the Furious had at the time represented. It is ironic that Fisher's least successful battleship design became the very successful forerunner of what is easily the most powerful and destructive naval vessel of modern times, the aircraft carrier. (Antony Preston, Carriers (London: Dragon, 1986).p.88) 101

Conclusion

Aube showed the torpedo's value as an independent arbiter of naval force. As technology caught up with his ideology, the debates of the Jeune Ecole reflected themselves in the conflicts between nations. Mahan gave navies a reason to exist and to fight. Despite his poor opinion of the torpedo boat, the shared global outlook he provided would see the torpedo boat employed and retained in greater numbers than ever before.

Tirpitz sought to combine and adopt the torpedo and utilize the capabilities it had already possessed, thus giving it an established identity for it even within the most devotes of battleship fleets. Fisher went further and adapted the torpedo boat to suit his desires and evolved it to meet the needs he envisioned. A formative chapter in the torpedo boat's development came to an end as its intellectual successors took to the depths of the ocean and the skies above. 102

Chapter 6: Conclusion

Of the numerous technological innovations in the nineteenth century, many were developed within the naval arena, involving new ideas, materials, weapons, communications and methods of propulsion. However, the creation of the torpedo boat was special, and its impact on affairs of the day, thinkers of the time, and progression into the present was enormous. The torpedo boat introduced the capacity for small craft to possess an active and independent means of large scale destructive capability. The debate that quickly arose saw the vessel championed, downplayed and even vilified by some.

However, the vessel could not be ignored and all who ventured into this realm of thought had to deal, one way or another with the resulting controversy. Whereas precursors such as the or weaponry like the passive explosive mine and spar and towed explosives were dangerous to large vessels when these weapons worked, the torpedo boat possessed a capacity for adaptation that quickly outstripped all its competitors to make the threat of destruction a practical reality, even against the largest of ships. Regardless of what size, armour, armament or training a warship possessed, it could be, and would be, sent to the bottom of the sea by the 'devil's device'.

As the nineteenth century progressed, the torpedo boat would steal the safe sense of security that navies once held. Mighty fleets had always taken some security for granted. Now this small craft could chase them from hostile coasts, out to the open seas and all the way back to their own harbours. Naval warships, wary of these miniscule 103

boats, came to jump at shadows while hiding tightly beneath blankets of netting and elaborate defensive fortifications. They would search the darkness while frantically clutching their new electric searchlights and aiming their new quick firing guns.

Ironically, they would eventually come to depend upon the very vessel they feared to protect them, adapting this versatile vessel and giving the adaptation the title of

'destroyer'. In time, the torpedo boat would expand even beyond the sea's surface to fly among the skies and dive beneath the seas. Ships in military action and ships of commerce would come to know the fear of the torpedo. Prior to the torpedo boat, the large battleship with its many guns had been the only vessel capable holding its place in the line of battle. Building on the success of the torpedo boat, three new types of ships, the destroyer, aircraft carrier (carrying "airborne torpedo boats" and intellectual descendant to the torpedo carrier) and submarine, were developed and now make up the basis of the modern battle fleet (save cruisers which are still used by four nations). It has been more than half a century since any nation built a big gun battleship.

What began in 1869 as a means to carry the torpedo, a weapon designed by an

English engineer and built in Austria, within 30 years came to be adopted by the nations of the world. This tiny vessel with its dangerous load inflamed the imagination of prominent thinkers and decision makers. By the late 1870s, it was keeping nations away from each others' shores, thus changing the balance of power between nations of different degrees of naval power. It neatly cut the direct impact of stronger fleets in 104

threatening the possessions and landscape of a weaker naval power. By the late 1880s, it travelled onto the high seas, posing an unprecedented challenge to the highways of commerce. Finally, by the turn of the century, as torpedo boats became an essential element of the naval fleet, they forced navies to question the very measure of naval might and the role of the fleet itself. In the First World War, the torpedo boat occupied a central role, inspiring new adaptations and designs. The tiny torpedo boat with its powerful weapon created a controversy and legacy of enormous proportions, influencing the whole of naval thought and practice through its presence. Bibliography

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