The length to which the supporting functions of the fleet may be carried will always be a delicate question.  The suggestion that its strength must be affected by the need of the army for the men of the fleet or its boats, which imply its men as well, will appear heretical.  A battle-squadron, we say, is intended to deal with the enemy’s battle-squadron and its men to fight the ships, and the mind revolts at the idea of the strength of a squadron being fixed by any other standard.  Theoretically nothing can seem more true, but it is an idea of peace and the study.  The atmosphere of war engendered a wider and more practical view.  The men of the old wars knew that when a squadron is attached to a combined expedition it is something different from a purely naval unit.  They knew, moreover, that an army acting oversea against hostile territory is an incomplete organism incapable of striking its blow in the most effective manner without the assistance of the men of the fleet.  It was the office, then, of the naval portion of the force not only to defend the striking part of the organism, but to complete its deficiencies and lend it the power to strike.  Alone and unaided the army cannot depend on getting itself ashore, it cannot supply itself, it cannot secure its retreat, nor can it avail itself of the highest advantages of an amphibious force, the sudden shift of base or line of operation.  These things the fleet must do for it, and it must do them with its men.[25]

[25] The Japanese in the late war attempted to do this work by means of a highly organized Army Disembarkation Staff, but except in perfect conditions of weather and locality it does not seem to have worked well, and in almost all cases the assistance of the navy was called in.

The authority for this view is abundant.  In 1800, for instance, when General Maitland was charged with an expedition against Belleisle, he was invited to state what naval force he would require.  He found it difficult to fix with precision.  “Speaking loosely, however,” he wrote, “three or four sail of the line and four or five active frigates appear to me to be properly adequate to the proposed service.  The frigates to blockade.”  (Meaning, of course, to blockade the objective and prevent reinforcements reaching it from the mainland, always one of the supporting functions of the squadron attached to the transports.) “The line-of-battle ships,” he adds, “to furnish us with the number of men necessary for land operations.”  In this case our permanent blockading squadrons supplied the cover, and what Maitland meant was that the battleships he asked for were to be added to the transport squadron not as being required for escort, but for support.  St. Vincent, who was then First Lord, not only endorsed his request, but gave him for disembarkation work one more ship-of-the-line than he had asked for.  At this time our general command of the sea had been very fully secured, and we had plenty of naval force to spare for its exercise.  It will be well to compare it with a case in which the circumstances were different.