The 1890 manoeuvres placed an enemy fleet on an important trade route.23 The British fleet sought to engage it (the enemy fleet tried to avoid engagement). A secondary object was to find the best way to employ the considerable body of scouting cruisers on both sides. Each side could put cruisers to sea before the outbreak of war in order to watch the other fleet. At the outbreak of war the main British fleet was at Plymouth, a reserve British fleet was at Portland; it was allowed to move from one port to another as necessary. The enemy fleet was at Berehaven in Ireland (later it also used a base at Shannon). Upon declaration of war, the enemy fleet would enter the Channel from the West, the British fleet seeking to engage it. One artificial restriction was that cruisers, which in previous exercises had attacked trade directly, were limited to scouting and despatch (i.e., linking) services. The hostile fleet established a torpedo boat base (boats plus the cruiser [sloop] Curlew, other cruisers later joining) at Alderney in the Channel Islands to operate against any British fleet trying to use the Channel. The design of the exercise was somewhat complicated by the need not to interfere with actual shipping in the Channel.
The main British fleet was commanded by Vice Admiral Sir George Tryon, at that time the leading British tactician. He had nine battleships and thirteen cruisers and lesser craft, including the old unarmoured cruiser Inconstant, the armoured cruiser Shannon, and several torpedo gunboats. A second British fleet was created from the mobilized Reserve Squadron and based at Portland as a kind of coast defence force: six battleships and coast defence ships, the torpedo depot ship Hecla, and only three cruisers (the old cruiser Active and two torpedo gunboats). The Portland force also included twelve torpedo boats. The enemy had eight battleships, twelve cruisers, and twelve torpedo boats. The enemy fleet managed to get to sea unobserved. In the past, enemy fleets had generally been intercepted by British fleets lying off their bases, waiting for them to emerge. Once an enemy fleet lost itself in the trackless sea, the only hope of catching it was to guess its destination (or to gain intelligence of that destination). In 1798 Nelson found the French at Aboukir only by learning of their movements from ships in the Mediterranean, and it was crucial that they stayed at Aboukir long enough for him to get there. By 1890 the Admiralty was assembling operational intelligence, which could be distributed by telegraph to special signal stations around the British coast. Without radio, which did not yet exist, an admiral afloat had to rely on linking ships (or on ships steaming out from the coast) to provide him with that sort of information – i.e., on fast cruisers.
Tryon did have an important advantage. Like Milne, he knew that the only profitable place for an enemy to attack trade was in a focal area, so he concentrated his cruisers there. He also arranged to be in almost constant communication with the English coast, hence with the Admiralty intelligence centre. His first move was to send three powerful cruiser divisions to await the enemy fleet in the focal area. He soon sent a battle force out to back up the cruisers. Tryon’s dispositions blocked a possible enemy run up the Channel. Tryon was thus the first to test the ability of modern materiel to combine an adequate defence of a vital spot of trade, to maintain regular and frequent communication with a base, and to keep the Channel clear of an enemy.
Tryon failed; he never brought the enemy fleet to battle. The two fleets were never closer than 300nm, and at the end of the manoeuvres they were 1700 nm apart. The umpires praised Tryon’s use of his cruisers; the hostile fleet clearly did not consider cruiser scouting a primary object. The cruiser force Tryon wielded was not strong enough. An enemy who managed to get out of his port unobserved could still get away altogether. To the extent that there was a solution, it had to be more and faster cruisers, not least to link deployed scouts with the main body of a fleet.
The 1892 manoeuvres had a Red fleet in two separated divisions, trying to join up in the face of enemy (Blue) torpedo attacks – of the sort the French could and would mount from their side of the Channel against a British fleet whose bases were still dispersed (the Irish Channel played the part of the English Channel). The torpedo boats were backed by coast defence ships and cruisers. Opposite the Blue torpedo base was a Red base with torpedo boats, catchers (torpedo gunboats), and coast defence ships. This Red force tried to cover the juncture of the two Red divisions by attacking the Blue base and force.
Again, each fleet and each division included a large cruiser force. The Red first division consisted of eight battleships, two armoured cruisers, seven second-class cruisers, and two torpedo gunboats. Red’s second division was seven more battleships, one armoured cruiser, six second-class cruisers, and two torpedo gunboats. The Red covering squadron consisted of four coast defence ships backed by a second-class cruiser, eight torpedo gunboats, and six torpedo boats. Blue had three coast defence ships, the three oldest armoured cruisers, six second-class cruisers, three torpedo gunboats, the depot ship Hecla, and twenty-one torpedo boats. Cruiser operations began even before hostilities, each side’s cruisers watching the other’s fleet in harbour. As long as the observers remained outside the three-mile limit, they could not be driven off before hostilities began. The umpires pointed out that not much could or would be seen, either, unless the observed party sent out ships to challenge the observers. Moreover, the observers always ran the risk that the observed party, having declared war, could jump them. It surprised the Blue commander that the Red Covering Force, which was not far from his own, made no pre-emptive attack using its own torpedo boats, but instead retired from the Irish Channel. Blue never engaged it at all; it might as well not have been present. The day of coast defence/coast attack ships was over: they could not live in the presence of torpedo boats.
Like the French fleet, Blue enjoyed a considerable superiority in torpedo boats. That had surprisingly little impact on Blue’s behaviour, because the superiority counted for so little among Blue officers. The official report sympathized that there was no record of battle experience on which to base confidence or its lack, but he considered it important that Blue showed ‘a tendency to consider the torpedo boat as something not to be included in the ordinary naval strength of a country ...’ The Red divisional commanders certainly were impressed, the torpedo boat threat delaying their junction by about 43 hours (had it not been thought necessary to have a long period of daylight after the junction [to stave off a night torpedo attack], the delay would have been 37 hours). The delay could be attributed to caution considered necessary when entering waters in which hostile torpedo boats might be operating. Red was clearly impressed with the torpedo boat threat, which was probably exactly what the French hoped. The umpires thought this an important illustration of likely wartime behaviour.
Blue could have chosen either to concentrate its force (as it did) or to distribute its torpedo craft along the coast to harass Red. It concentrated and was destroyed. The exercise report suggested that the special characteristics of torpedo boats made dispersal the wiser course. It also seemed that Blue had been foolish to use its torpedo boats to search for the enemy; they should have been kept in hand for a surprise attack as the enemy approached. Torpedo boats were most successful, it seemed, when they were sent to attack an enemy whose location had already been found – most likely by a cruiser working with the torpedo boats. British and foreign exercises tabulated over five years showed that when the position of the objective was not known at all, the boats succeeded three times; when it was approximately known, six times; and when it was exactly known, sixteen times.
‘The number of cruisers to be attached to a Fleet is fixed according to the service on which the Fleet is employed rather than the number of battleships which it contains.’ A memo on cruiser organization (for the second division of the Red Fleet) distinguished lookout cruisers (which should be paired) from scouts. Scouts would form a Detached Squadron. There was no allowance for repeaters or links from scouts back to the main body: Scouts could never stray far from visual range.
In the 1894 manoeuvres, each fleet (Red and Blue) was split in half, each trying to unite its two squadrons before being destroyed in detail. Red had six and Blue had eighteen torpedo boats.