p.159 If the opposing armed force cannot be destroyed, security against it can only be reached by
neutralising its action, which can be done by threatening, or evading or postponing battle... Hence, the military
aim of each side is to destroy in battle, or to neutralise the action of the opposing armed force, while sparing its own.
These are the primary military aims.
p.160 in any particular war all sea battles must be looked upon as one great whole since
the losses in each one affect the balance of the navies as wholes... Thus, all sea battles are dependent
tactical activities which re-act on each other however remote they may be in space and time and however small
the forces engaged
p.160 This tactical independence of fleets and armies is important since it means that the tactical
deficiencies of an army cannot be made good by a fleet and vice versa.
p.162 In either case it becomes necessary to neutralise the action of the opposing armed force.
This can be done by: -
Either threatening battle,
or evading battle,
or postponing battle.
p.163 The most impressive example of the stronger fleet limiting enemy movements by the threat of
battle is to be found...
and then there is this...
[Lord St. Vincent - Admiralty Historical Essay for 1921, by Lieutenant C.H. Drage]
p.181 He was, naturally, destined by his parents for
the legal profession, but, owing to his father being appointed counsel to the Admiralty and auditor of Greenwich
Hospital, he came early into a nautical atmosphere and, according to his own story, determined to go to sea on the
advice of his father's coachman, who told him that "all lawyers were rogues." At all
events, in 1747, he ran away from school and, in 1748, entered the Navy by the patronage of Lady Burleigh.
p.185-186 many of his views must have appeared grotesque to
his contemporaries. Indeed, his advocacy of the abandonment of Canada is almost incredible, even in those
days of pessimism as to the future of the Empire.
p.192 Whatever
may be thought of Jervis's tactical ability, there can be no two views as to his genius in the domain of strategy.
p.204 As a politician he displayed no very marked ability,
and contrived to make a good many enemies. It has even been suggested that Pitt sent his political opponents,
St. Vincent and Grey, to the West Indies for the same reason that Napoleon dispatched the inconveniently republican
"Army of the West" to that unhealthy region. His speeches, in both Houses, are chiefly remarkable for the number of
opinions he expressed which have since been proved to be wrong. Reference has already been made to his views on Canada
(page 186). He was opposed to the education of the masses and, in particular, to teaching the lower deck
to read and write. His opposition to the abolition of slavery seems to have been based largely on expediency
and on the crudity of the schemes put forward, but he also opposed the Vaccination Laws on the rather startling grounds
(if Brenton is to be believed) that small-pox was a natural check on the population.
