[21] Barham Papers, i, 292.

It was on these lines the war was conducted.  The West Indian area, in which lay the enemy’s principal object, was treated as the offensive theatre and the home waters as the defensive.  Inferior as was the Channel fleet to the home fleet of the allies, its defensive operations proved adequate to prevent their achieving any success.  Nor was this all, for Kempenfelt was able to demonstrate the positive side of his theory in the most brilliant and convincing manner.  In dealing with concentration we have seen how, in command of such a flying squadron as he postulated, he was able off Ushant to seize a favourable opportunity for action, which resulted in his capturing a convoy of military stores essential to the French operations in the West Indies under the nose of De Guichen with an escort of nearly twice his force.

Nelson certainly shared Kempenfelt’s views as to the possibilities of an inferior fleet kept actively in being.  “As to our fleet,” he wrote from the Mediterranean in 1796, “under such a commander-in-chief as Sir John Jervis nobody has any fear ...  We are now twenty-two sail of the line.  The combined fleet will not be above thirty-five....  I will venture my life Sir John Jervis defeats them.  I do not mean by a regular battle, but by the skill of our admiral and the activity and spirit of our officers and seamen.  This country is the most favourable possible for that skill with an inferior fleet; for the winds are so variable, that some one time in twenty-four hours you must be able to attack a part of a large fleet, and the other will be becalmed or have a contrary wind.  Therefore I hope the Government will not be alarmed for our safety.”

Such a conception of the defensive may indeed be said to have become current in the British service.  It was part of the reasoning which in 1805, after Villeneuve’s escape from the Mediterranean, decided Sir John Orde to fall back on Ushant instead of entering the Straits.  “I dare believe,” he wrote, “Lord Nelson will be found in condition with his twelve of the line and numerous frigates to act on the defensive without loss and even to hang on to the skirts of the enemy’s fleet should it attempt any material service, especially when encumbered with troops.”

In all this consideration of the potentialities of “a fleet in being” operating defensively it must never be forgotten that we are dealing with its possibilities in relation to a general command of the sea—­to its general power of holding such command in dispute, as Torrington used it.  Its power of preventing a particular operation, such as oversea invasion, is another matter, which will always depend upon the local conditions.  If the “fleet in being” can be contained in such a way that it is impossible for it to reach the invading line of passage, it will be no bar to invasion.  In 1690, so far as Torrington’s fleet was concerned, the French, had they been so minded, might have made