of the combined operations, organised the fleet into a “Covering squadron” and a “Squadron in charge of transports.”  In the second place, the designation serves to emphasise what is its main and primary function.  For important as it is to keep in mind its support duties, they must not be permitted to overshadow the fact that its paramount function is to prevent interference with the actual combined operations—­that is, the landing, support, and supply of the army.  Thus in 1705, when Shovel and Peterborough were operating against Barcelona, Shovel was covering the amphibious siege from the French squadron in Toulon.  Peterborough required the assistance of the marines ashore to execute a coup de main, and Shovel only consented to land them on the express understanding that the moment his cruisers passed the signal that the Toulon squadron was putting to sea, they would have to be recalled to the fleet no matter what the state of the land operations.  And to this Peterborough agreed.  The principle involved, it will be seen, is precisely that which Lyons’s term “Covering squadron” embodies.

To quote anything that happened in the Crimean War as a precedent without such traditional support will scarcely appear convincing.  In our British way we have fostered a legend that so far as organisation and staff work were concerned that war was nothing but a collection of deterrent examples.  But in truth as a combined operation its opening movement both in conception and organisation was perhaps the most daring, brilliant, and successful thing of the kind we ever did.  Designed as the expedition was to assist an ally in his own country, it was suddenly called upon without any previous preparation to undertake a combined operation of the most difficult kind against the territory of a well-warned enemy.  It involved a landing late in the year on an open and stormy coast within striking distance of a naval fortress which contained an army of unknown strength, and a fleet not much inferior in battle power and undefeated.  It was an operation comparable to the capture of Louisburg and the landing of the Japanese in the Liaotung Peninsula, but the conditions were far more difficult.  Both those operations had been rehearsed a few years previously, and they had been long prepared on the fullest knowledge.  In the Crimea everything was in the dark; even steam was an unproved element, and everything had to be improvised.  The French had practically to demobilise their fleet to supply transport, and so hazardous did the enterprise appear, that they resisted its being undertaken with every military argument.  We had in fact, besides all the other difficulties, to carry an unwilling ally upon our backs.  Yet it was accomplished, and so far at least as the naval part was concerned, the methods which achieved success mark the culmination of all we had learnt in three centuries of rich experience.