THE ROYAL NAVY AND THE FRENCH WARS: THE LONG-TERM BACKGROUND By Jeremy Black, University of Exeter

To understand the (British) Royal Navy at the time of the Napoleonic Wars, it is necessary to appreciate the extent to which they were not a new episode for the navy but rather the latest iteration of a repeated challenge that had existed since 1689. Moreover, the navy had institutional and career continuity, and indeed to a much greater extent than its Continental rivals. As a result, it is necessary to look at long-term continuities when trying to understand the Napoleonic Wars at sea. A key form of continuity was offered by the technology itself. The incremental process of naval improvement continued in the last decades of sail, but, with hindsight provided by subsequent technological developments, it is possible to see the period in terms of the use of yet greater resources of people, materiel and funds to use established means to pursue familiar military courses. The American and French Revolutions certainly did not bring changes in naval warfare comparable to those on land. Instead, the long-term growing stress on naval firepower continued to affect fleet structures. Whereas in 1720, there were only two warships displacing more than 3,000 tons, by 1815 nearly a fifth of the naval strength above 500 tons was in this category. In 1800-15, ships of 2,500-3,000 tons achieved greater importance, whereas those of 2,000-2,500 and 1,500-2,000 tons declined in number. These bigger ships were able to carry heavier guns. Whereas the average ship of the line in 1720 had 60 guns and was armed with 12and 24-pounders, that of 1815 had 74 guns with 32and 36-pounders on the lower deck. Nevertheless, this greater firepower did not lead to dramatic changes in naval warfare and it did not begin in the RevolutionaryNapoleonic period. There were other improvements. Better signalling in the period 1790s-1810s helped to enhance the potential for tactical control. The invention of a system of ship construction using diagonal bracing in order to strengthen hulls and to prevent the arching of keels, was to increase the resilience of ships, and thus their sea and battle-worthiness, and to permit the building of longer two-deckers armed with 80 or 90 guns. These improvements helped make earlier ships appear redundant, certainly for the line of battle, but, although Seppings experimented in the 1800s at Plymouth and Chatham, the first ship built entirely on this principle, HMS Howe, was not launched until 1815. Diagonal framing was mainly significant after the introduction of steam made it important to build longer ships.