Naval Strategy

Naval strategy is the planning and conduct of naval warfare and represents the maritime equivalent of land-based military strategy. It encompasses the overall approach adopted by a state or commander to achieve victory at sea through the direction of naval forces, the organisation of campaigns, and the management of maritime resources. Closely related to maritime strategy, naval strategy focuses on the movement, deployment, and employment of fleets in ways that secure strategic advantage, including choosing favourable theatres of operation and deceiving the enemy. While naval tactics deal with the execution of plans and the manoeuvring of ships in battle, naval strategy operates at a higher level, shaping the objectives, scope, and direction of naval warfare.

Principles of Naval Strategy

The fundamental aims of a naval fleet in wartime have traditionally been threefold: to keep the coast of its own country free from enemy attack, to secure the freedom of its maritime trade and communications, and to destroy the enemy’s fleet or confine it to port. The first two objectives are generally dependent upon the third, since the destruction or paralysis of the hostile fleet prevents effective interference with trade and coastal security. A fleet that successfully secures the freedom of its own sea communications while denying the same to the enemy is said to possess command of the sea.
Naval strategy differs significantly from land-based military strategy. At sea, there is no territory to occupy in the conventional sense, and few economic assets can be directly seized or denied, apart from fisheries and, in more recent times, offshore oil and gas fields. Unlike armies, which can often live off the land they occupy, fleets are dependent upon their supply chains, including fuel, ammunition, food, and maintenance facilities. As a result, the protection of maritime communications and logistics is central to naval strategic thought.

Early Origins and the Concept of the Fleet in Being

One of the earliest influential ideas in naval strategy was the concept of the fleet in being, commonly attributed to the British admiral Arthur Herbert, 1st Earl of Torrington. During the War of the Grand Alliance in 1690, Torrington faced a French fleet that was clearly superior in strength. He proposed avoiding decisive battle except under highly favourable conditions, arguing that merely maintaining his fleet intact would prevent the French from gaining command of the sea and thus frustrate any invasion of England.
Although Torrington was eventually compelled to engage the French at the Battle of Beachy Head in June 1690, suffering defeat, the French gained control of the English Channel for only a brief period. The episode illustrated the strategic value of a fleet that, even without fighting, could exert influence by its continued existence and potential threat.

Guerre de Course and Commerce Raiding

By the mid-1690s, French privateers operating from Atlantic ports such as Saint-Malo and Dunkirk posed a serious threat to Anglo-Dutch commerce. This pressure forced England and its allies to divert warships from fleet actions to convoy escort and the suppression of privateers. In France, the apparent success of commerce raiding encouraged a shift from employing the navy primarily as a battle fleet (guerre d’escadre) to a strategy focused on attacking enemy trade (guerre de course).
One of the most notable episodes of this approach was Admiral Anne Hilarion de Tourville’s attack on the allied Smyrna convoy in June 1693, which resulted in heavy losses to merchant shipping. However, when pursued as a primary fleet strategy rather than by smaller, independent vessels, commerce raiding had significant disadvantages. It often left a nation’s own trade inadequately protected, and raiding squadrons were vulnerable to being defeated by stronger enemy forces, as seen at the Battle of San Domingo in 1806 and the Battle of the Falkland Islands in 1914.

The Development of the Close Blockade

Until the late seventeenth century, it was widely believed to be impractical or reckless to keep large warships at sea during the winter months. As a result, continuous blockades of enemy ports were considered beyond the capacity of any navy, and fleet movements were heavily constrained by the need to protect trade through convoy systems.
This situation changed in the mid-eighteenth century with the development of the close blockade, first implemented effectively by Admiral Edward Hawke during the Seven Years’ War and later perfected by John Jervis, 1st Earl of St Vincent, and other British commanders during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. Continuous blockade restricted enemy fleets to port, disrupted maritime trade, and allowed Britain to exert sustained pressure without seeking constant decisive battle.

Codification of Naval Strategic Theory

Although naval strategy had been practised for centuries, it was not until the late nineteenth century that formal theories began to be systematically developed. This period saw the emergence of influential thinkers who sought to derive general principles from historical experience.

Alfred Thayer Mahan and Sea Power

Captain, later Rear Admiral, Alfred Thayer Mahan was an American naval officer and historian whose ideas had a profound impact on naval thought worldwide. Influenced by the strategic principles of Antoine-Henri Jomini, Mahan argued that control of the sea was the decisive factor in great power conflicts. Studying the eighteenth-century wars between Britain and France, he concluded that maritime dominance through powerful battle fleets determined the outcome of wars, while control of trade was a consequence rather than a cause of naval supremacy.
Mahan maintained that the primary objective in naval warfare was the destruction or neutralisation of the enemy’s battle fleet. Once achieved, blockade, control of maritime communications, and the disruption of enemy commerce would naturally follow. His most influential works, The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660–1783 and The Influence of Sea Power upon the French Revolution and Empire, 1793–1812, helped fuel the naval arms race of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Mahan’s ideas strongly influenced United States naval policy, particularly under Theodore Roosevelt, who prioritised the construction of a modern battle fleet and demonstrated American naval power through the global voyage of the Great White Fleet. Strategic projects such as the Panama Canal were also conceived in line with Mahanian principles, enabling rapid concentration of naval forces between oceans.

The Colomb Brothers and British Strategic Thought

In Britain, Captain John Colomb and his brother Admiral Philip Howard Colomb sought to establish general rules of naval warfare based on historical analysis. John Colomb emphasised the navy’s central role in imperial defence, while Philip Colomb’s work Naval Warfare attempted to systematise lessons from past conflicts. Although significant, their contributions did not achieve the same international prominence as Mahan’s writings.

Julian Corbett and Maritime Strategy

Sir Julian Corbett offered an alternative perspective to Mahan’s emphasis on decisive fleet battles. A British naval historian and lecturer at the Royal Naval War College, Corbett stressed the interdependence of naval and land warfare. He argued that naval battle was not an end in itself but a means to secure or deny maritime communications.
For Corbett, command of the sea was not absolute but relative, varying by time and place, and could be general or local, temporary or permanent. He identified two principal methods of controlling sea communications: the physical destruction or capture of enemy vessels and the imposition of naval blockade. His work Some Principles of Maritime Strategy remains a foundational text in naval strategic studies.

Impact of the World Wars

The First and Second World Wars profoundly transformed naval strategy through technological innovation. The introduction of submarines enabled new approaches such as unrestricted submarine warfare, while advances in radio communication and radar greatly enhanced coordination, detection, and command and control at sea.
A critical change during this period was the transition from coal to oil as the primary naval fuel. Coal-powered ships required large crews to manage boilers and refuelling, limited speed, and occupied significant storage space. Oil propulsion increased operational speed, extended range, reduced manpower requirements, and simplified logistics, allowing fleets to operate more flexibly and effectively.

World War I and the Dreadnought Era

In the years leading up to the First World War, European powers engaged in an intense naval arms race. A defining moment came in 1906 with the launch of HMS Dreadnought, a revolutionary British battleship powered by steam turbines and armed with an unprecedented concentration of heavy guns. Its speed and firepower rendered existing battleships obsolete and reshaped naval strategy around the construction and deployment of all-big-gun capital ships.