DEVELOPMENT OF NAVAL TACTICS It is quite conceivable that the most elementary tactics were those employed by the earliest antagonists afloat in their endeav ours to board each other's craft and obtain victory by a hand to hand conflict. This primitive form of sea warfare held a recog nised place in the tactical handling of fleets even up to the Trafalgar Era. Moreover we see instances of its unpremeditated revival even in the World War, notably in the hand to hand encounters which ensued when the flotilla leader "Broke" under Commander E. R. G. R. Evans charged into a German destroyer flotilla in the Straits of Dover on the night of April 20, 1917. "Boarding," as it came to be called, was an operation calling for considerable skill, whether in the ancient days of war canoes and rowing galleys, or in later years when great sailing ships of the line grappled with each other yard-arm to yard-arm.
Contemporary with these boarding tactics was another early form of attack, namely that of using the ship itself as a ram. The ancient triremes, although they used sails for making a pas sage from place to place, found this method of propulsion was not sufficiently handy for fighting and ramming, and, before going into battle, oars were reverted to. We find similar methods adopted by Phormio, the Athenian Admiral of the 5th century B.C., by the Norse King Olaf Tryggveson of the loth century A.D. and by the chiefs of the Christian and Turkish fleets at the Battle of Lepanto in A.D. 1571. In fact, for centuries naval tactics seem to have been moulded into a more or less common form. The vessels usually aimed at attacking in line abreast (see FLEET) the object being that action should be joined by all units simul taneously and that they should ram and subsequently board the enemy in a united effort. It was necessary to attack head on for boarding no less than for ramming, because the oars projected so far outside the opposing craft that they could not otherwise be brought close enough for the crew to jump the intervening space. It may be noted that this same difficulty prevailed in the case of sailing ships in later times, as they were built with "tumble home" sides, that is to say, with sides sloping inwards from the water .line.
Success either in ramming or boarding depended, of course, on the skill with which each vessel was handled. The highly trained Athenian crews of the early Peloponnesian wars relied mainly on the ram. They usually endeavoured to sheer off the oars from one side of an opponent, and when he was at their mercy, turn and ram him in the stern. But ramming, whether
by the rowing galley or the steel-shod battleship of much more recent times, has always proved an uncertain form of attack, for a very slight error of judgment may convert the rammer into the rammee, while the impact may so seriously damage the bows of the ship ramming that she is left in considerable straits herself, even though she may have seriously damaged her adversary. Nevertheless we see the idea of ramming influencing warship design up to as late a period as 1911, when the last British battle ships, the "Lord Nelson" and "Agamemnon," were built with ram bows.
Tactics on a more elaborate scale have developed with the increasing range of weapons. Such primitive armaments as bolts fired from heavy cross bows fixed on the bulwarks, bows and arrows, weights dropped from a yard or pole rigged over the side, and various incendiary projectiles, like burning tow attached to arrows or "Greek fire" blown through tubes, all necessitated close action. Even the introduction of guns did not at first produce much in the way of tactical manoeuvring, save with the object of getting the weather gauge, so long as their limitations necessi tated fighting at almost point blank range. But tactical man oeuvring as we understand it to-day may however, be said to have been employed by the British fleet in its encounter with the Spanish Armada. In this historic conflict the Spanish ships suffered from first to last by being out-manoeuvred and out ranged by their opponents. They towered out of the water like great high fortresses ; but they depended for victory largely on the lines of infantrymen armed with pikes and muskets, which stood in serried ranks, awaiting the opportunity to board. But this the elusive English failed to give them. At the outset Drake, with his ships in single line ahead, sailed round the great fleet of Medina Sidonia, and while seeming at first to refuse battle, he obtained the exact position that he desired. Then each English ship in turn, using her longer ranging guns, opened an overwhelm ing and unanswerable fire on her adversary, mowing down the defenceless lines of infantry. Having discharged her broadside, each, in turn, swung round to take station astern, while her guns were reloaded. The result was to throw the Spanish fleet into a state of confusion and demoralisation, from which it never recov ered and from which it suffered more and more during its un happy passage up-channel and final dispersion when what ships remained fled into the open waters of the North sea.