provision was made for an adequate exercise of control.  In our own case at least, massing for offensive action was pressed so far that no thought was given to sustaining it by reliefs.  Consequently our offensive power suffered periods of exhaustion when the fleet had to return to its base, and the Dutch were left sufficient freedom not only to secure their own trade, but to strike severely at ours.  Their counterstrokes culminated in the famous attack upon Sheerness and Chatham.  That such an opportunity was allowed them can be traced directly to an exaggeration of the new doctrine.  In the belief of the British Government the “St. James’s Fight”—­the last of the three actions—­had settled the question of command.  Negotiations for peace were opened, and they were content to reap the fruit of the great battles in preying on Dutch trade.  Having done its work, as was believed, the bulk of the battle-fleet for financial reasons was laid up, and the Dutch seized the opportunity to demonstrate the limitations of the abused doctrine.  The lesson is one we have never forgotten, but its value is half lost if we attribute the disaster to lack of grasp of the battle-fleet doctrine rather than to an exaggeration of its possibilities.

The truth is, that we had not obtained a victory sufficiently decisive to destroy the enemy’s fleet.  The most valuable lesson of the war was that such victories required working for, and particularly in cases where the belligerents face each other from either side of a narrow sea.  In such conditions it was proved that owing to the facility of retreat and the restricted possibilities of pursuit a complete decision is not to be looked for without very special strategical preparation.  The new doctrine in fact gave that new direction to strategy which has been already referred to.  It was no longer a question of whether to make the enemy’s trade or his fleet the primary objective, but of how to get contact with his fleet in such a way as to lead to decisive action.  Merely to seek him out on his own coasts was to ensure that no decisive action would take place.  Measures had to be taken to force him to sea away from his own bases.  The favourite device was to substitute organised strategical operations against his trade in place of the old sporadic attacks; that is, the fleet took a position calculated to stop his trade altogether, not on his own coasts, but far to sea in the main fairway.  The operations failed for lack of provision for enabling the fleet by systematic relief to retain its position, but nevertheless it was the germ of the system which afterwards, under riper organisation, was to prove so effective, and to produce such actions as the “Glorious First of June.”

In the third war, after this device had failed again and again, a new one was tried.  It was Charles the Second’s own conception.  His idea was to use the threat of a military expedition.  Some 15,000 men in transports were brought to Yarmouth in the hope that the Dutch would come out to bar their passage across the open North Sea, and would thus permit our fleet to cut in behind them.  There was, however, no proper coordination of the two forces, and the project failed.